Southtowns Record

Town of Hamburg - Fuel Operations (2019M-75)

Government
Town of Hamburg
Posted by publisher
Jun 28, 2019
Kind
State audit
Topics
Audits and oversight, Roads and traffic, Public safety

Publisher's summary

The Board did not adopt written policies and procedures for purchasing fuel from gas stations and monitoring fuel held in reserve tanks. In addition, the Superintendent did not properly monitor gas station fuel purchases or reserve tank inventories. Officials also did not adequately safeguard access to fuel. After removing active police and firefighters from the Town's authorized driver list, 267 individuals remained. We compared these names with a list of active employees and found that 148 individuals were not current employees. One individual listed was a consultant for the Town and authorized to purchase fuel for Town-related travel. The remaining 147 individuals should not have been on the list or have active PINs for fuel purchases. Although 75 of these individuals were former employees, the remaining 72 were not. The Highway Superintendent did not adequately review fuel transactions. Finally, Department officials did not maintain fuel logs or perpetual inventory records for the reserve tanks to track fuel delivered, used or remaining in the tanks.

Original document

Text · page 5 of 20

Officials Did Not Properly Monitor or Account for Fuel
The Board did not adopt written policies and procedures for purchasing fuel
from gas stations and monitoring fuel held in reserve tanks. In addition, the
Superintendent5 did not properly monitor gas station fuel purchases or reserve
tank inventories.

The Superintendent told us that he performed a high-level review of the monthly
transaction reports from the gas station chain to review the gallons and dollar
amounts of the transactions. However, the Superintendent told us that he does
not review odometer readings or investigate significant variances on these
reports.

Without proper controls over fuel, officials cannot be certain that fuel purchased is
used for appropriate purposes.

Officials Did Not Adequately Safeguard Access to Fuel
After removing active police and firefighters from the authorized driver list, 267
individuals remained. We compared these names with a list of active employees
and found that 148 individuals were not current employees. One individual
listed was a consultant for the Town and authorized to purchase fuel for Town
related travel. The remaining 147 individuals should not have been on the list or
have active PINs. Although 75 of these individuals were former employees, the
remaining 72 were not.

This occurred because officials did not have procedures for identifying former
employees assigned PINs who left Town employment, or those who should
no longer have access to purchase fuel, and providing that information to the
Supervisor’s secretary to deactivate access. While there is a high probability
some or many of these individuals could be former firefighters, we were unable
to determine whether that was the case. We also compared the vehicle and
equipment inventory maintained by the departments to the list of vehicle fobs.
Other than minor discrepancies, which we discussed with officials, we found no
exceptions.

Town officials told us that they are in the process of implementing new procedures
for updating the authorized drivers list and the vehicle fob inventory. However, the
individuals we identified had not been removed from the authorized driver list as
of the end of our fieldwork.

5 The current Highway Superintendent took office on January 1, 2018.

  Of f ic e of t he New York State Comptroller  3