New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli today announced the following school district audits have been issued.

Genesee Valley Board of Cooperative Educational Services – Purchase Cards (2022M-27)

While the 198 BOCES purchase card charges reviewed were adequately supported and for valid purposes, only one was properly approved. The purchasing agent did not approve 197 purchases totaling approximately $46,000 before goods or services were obtained.

Genesee Valley Board of Cooperative Educational Services – Reserve Funds (2022M-39)

While the board and BOCES officials properly established reserve funds, they did not transparently fund the reserves or use or maintain reserve funds at reasonable levels. The board and officials used unnecessarily restricted funds that could have been refunded to school districts and overfunded two reserves totaling $1.9 million. Officials could not demonstrate the balances in the four remaining reserves, totaling approximately $800,000, were needed or reasonable and did not adopt a written reserve fund policy.

Ogdensburg City School District – Medicaid Reimbursements (2022M-52)

The district did not maximize Medicaid reimbursements by submitting claims for all eligible Medicaid services provided. Claims were not submitted and reimbursed for 1,365 eligible Medicaid services provided totaling $65,254, which resulted in the district not realizing $32,627 in revenue. The district lacked adequate procedures to ensure that Medicaid claims were submitted in a timely manner, necessary documentation requirements were met, and disallowed claims were reviewed and resubmitted when appropriate.

Otselic Valley Central School District – Procurement (2022M-58)

District officials did not always seek competition to procure goods and services not subject to competitive bidding. Out of nine purchases under the competitive bidding threshold reviewed totaling $109,671 and two professional service contracts totaling $35,038, officials did not seek competition for a transportation efficiency study ($32,500), purchases of ice melt ($10,845) and information technology equipment ($8,512), or for the district’s attorney that was paid $21,038 during the audit period. District officials may have saved $13,781 on fuel costs had they been able to use state contracts. Procurement policies and procedures were inadequate and did not help ensure officials sought competition for goods and services.

Town of Webb Union Free School District – Financial Management (2022M-53)

The board and district officials did not adopt realistic budgets and did not properly manage fund balance. The board consistently overestimated appropriations in the 2018-19 through 2020-21 budgets by a total of $3.7 million (16%) and appropriated fund balance totaling $3.5 million that was not needed. Officials improperly overstated fiscal year-end encumbrances by approximately $974,000 from 2018-19 through 2020-21. When unused appropriated fund balance and invalid encumbrances are added back to surplus fund balance, it increased to approximately 26%, as of June 30, 2021, exceeding the 4% statutory limit. Despite reporting excess surplus fund balance, the board increased the real property tax levy by 6.8% from 2017-18 through 2021-22 and levied more taxes than needed to fund operations.

West Islip Union Free School District – Financial Management (2022M-40)

The board appropriated fund balance that was not needed to fund operations and was not transparent when funding reserves. The board adopted budgets that overestimated appropriations by $24.6 million, or approximately 5.2% over a four-year period. The board annually appropriated fund balance that was not needed to pay operational expenses and made year-end unbudgeted transfers to reserves to stay within the statutory surplus fund balance limit. The board did not properly establish the workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance reserves which are also overfunded, having enough money to pay the average annual expenses for eight and 51 years respectively. The board and officials’ budgeting practices and management of fund balance and reserves resulted in levying more taxes then were needed to fund operations.

Track state and local government spending at Open Book New York. Under State Comptroller DiNapoli’s open data initiative, search millions of state and local government financial records, track state contracts, and find commonly requested data.