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The Town Made Improper, Questionable and Unsupported Payroll Payments We reviewed the 2021 payroll payments totaling approximately $400,000 made to all nine Finance Office employees. We also scanned the 2022 payroll records. Generally, Finance Office employees were paid accurately and in accordance with the Regulations, except for the former Director and one of her direct reports, as discussed below.1 During the period January 1, 2018 through November 30, 2022, the Town made improper, questionable and/or unsupported payroll payments totaling $18,961 to the former Director. Also, the former Director and one of her direct reports received unsupported out-of-title payroll payments totaling $1,838. Additionally, in 2021 and 2022, overtime payments totaling $5,611 were paid to three employees but were not approved by a supervisor. Out-of-Title Pay – We reviewed the out-of-title pay for four employees totaling $4,121 for 1,373.5 hours and determined that three employees were properly paid. However, for one employee, her supervisor (the former Director) did not always charge leave accruals when this employee earned out-of-title pay. As a result, we extended our review for this employee and the former Director to include January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2021. During this period, the employee was paid a total of $4,325 for 1,441.75 hours of out-of-title pay which was supported by time sheets approved by the former Director. However, the former Director did not charge leave time for 460.5 of the out-of-title pay hours as required by the Regulations. Therefore, this employee should not have been paid out-of-title pay totaling $1,382 because the former Director did not charge leave accruals. The former Director charged leave accruals for the remaining 981.25 hours and the employee was properly paid out- of-title pay totaling $2,943. We interviewed the employee, and she told us that she performed the duties of the former Director for the time she was paid at the out-of-title rate because the former Director was not in the office. The employee said she was not aware that the former Director did not charge leave accruals. Although the former Director had the authority and opportunity to reject the employee’s time sheets, she approved the out-of-title pay for this employee when approving the time sheets and the Finance Office’s payroll input summary for this time period. If the employee claimed it improperly and the former Director was working at the same time, then the former Director approved paying this employee at an unauthorized rate of pay. 1 See Appendix B for details of our sampling and testing methodology. Of f ic e of t he New York State Comptroller 7