Text · page 6 of 20
In addition to requiring a PIN for employees purchasing fuel, fobs are required when making fuel purchases for both vehicles and equipment. The departments have 107 fobs that are assigned to specific vehicles and 13 fobs that are for equipment and not assigned to a specific vehicle or piece of machinery. Vehicle fobs are kept on the key rings for each vehicle at the respective department offices when the vehicle is not in use. Equipment fobs are each attached to a clipboard and are given to employees working on specific projects. However, the Superintendent did not have a method to track which pieces of equipment or vehicles are fueled using an equipment fob. We identified 153 transactions for 3,250 gallons of fuel totaling $7,473, which were completed using equipment fobs. While the requirement to use both a PIN and a fob to obtain fuel helps to reduce some of the risks associated with not removing individuals from the authorized driver list, because equipment fobs are not properly monitored or tracked, there is still a risk of improper fuel purchases. As a result, officials cannot be sure that all purchased fuel is used for appropriate purposes. The Superintendent Did Not Adequately Review Fuel Transactions Monthly reports are provided by the gas station chain to the Supervisor’s secretary and the Superintendent that document each fuel transaction including the gallons purchased, date, time, location, the employee, the vehicle fob used, the odometer reading entered (if applicable), and the change in odometer reading since the prior fueling. We reviewed 1,405 fuel purchases by the departments,6 totaling $70,900. We found 313 transactions (22 percent), totaling $14,931, for which the odometer reading entered was unreasonable compared to prior odometer reading. For example, mileage entered for multiple vehicles were sometimes lower than previous odometer reading, ranging from 40 miles lower to 10,000 miles lower. In some instances, no odometer reading was entered for different vehicles. We discussed other minor discrepancies with Town officials. The Superintendent told us that employees may forget the odometer reading after they exit the vehicle or may enter it incorrectly, and therefore the odometer readings on the monthly report may be inaccurate. However, because the Superintendent did not investigate discrepancies found on the monthly reports, there is an increased risk that fuel purchases may not be for appropriate Town purposes. 6 Refer to Appendix B for information on our sampling methodology. 4 Of f ic e of t he New York State Comptroller