Audit Objective
Did the Rushville Hose Company, Inc. (Company) Board of Trustees (Board) and membership provide adequate oversight of financial operations?
Audit Period
January 1, 2024 – January 5, 2026
Understanding the Audit Area
The Board and membership must provide adequate oversight of financial operations to ensure that Company funds are managed with accountability, transparency and integrity. A lack of oversight can lead to mismanagement, fraud, damaged reputation and jeopardize a fire company’s funding and its mission.
From January 1, 2024, through October 31, 2025, the Company’s revenues and redeposited startup cash1 totaled $66,135 and disbursements totaled $43,498.
Audit Summary
The Board and membership did not provide adequate oversight of financial operations, enforce the limited financial provisions in the Company’s bylaws, or adopt adequately detailed written bylaws to provide guidance to the Company Treasurer (Treasurer) for recording and reporting financial transactions. The Board did not ensure that the Treasurer’s financial duties were adequately segregated and did not monitor the Treasurer’s work to provide compensating controls. As a result, unsupported and unapproved disbursements were made, and the Company had an increased risk that errors and irregularities could go undetected and uncorrected, which could result in theft, waste and abuse of Company resources.
The Treasurer submitted monthly reports, with detailed bank account balances and monthly income (revenue) and expenses (disbursements), to the Board each month, and the Board annually reviewed the Treasurer’s manual ledger. However, the Board did not regularly review bank statements and supporting revenue and disbursement documentation. Also, the Treasurer did not provide canceled check images to the Board for review. Therefore, the Board and membership did not review necessary financial information to help ensure that the Company’s financial operations were authorized, adequately accounted for, recorded and reported. As a result, the Board and membership were unaware that the Treasurer did not maintain adequate supporting documentation for 35 deposited revenue collections (50 percent) totaling $9,849.
In addition, although we determined that 21 check disbursements totaling $6,489 that exceeded $100 were adequately supported, 14 (67 percent) of these totaling $4,289 were not approved by the membership before they were paid. Furthermore, we reviewed 53 debit card purchases totaling $10,323 that exceeded $100 and determined that 52 purchases (98 percent) totaling $9,896 were not approved by the membership before they were paid, and seven debit card purchases for rescue equipment, food and fundraising supplies totaling $1,451 did not contain adequate supporting documentation.
The report includes eight recommendations that, if implemented, will improve the Board and membership’s financial operations oversight. Company officials generally agreed with our recommendations and have initiated or indicated they planned to initiate corrective action.
We conducted this audit pursuant to Article V, Section 1 of the State Constitution and the State Comptroller’s authority as set forth in Article 3 of the New York State General Municipal Law. Our methodology and standards are included in Appendix C.
The Board has the responsibility to initiate corrective action. We encourage the Board to prepare a written corrective action plan (CAP) that addresses the recommendations in this report and forward it to our office within 90 days. For more information on preparing and filing your CAP, please refer to our brochure, Responding to an OSC Audit Report, which you received with the draft audit report. We encourage the Board to make the CAP available for public review.
1 This is cash used at the beginning of fundraisers, generally needed to make change, and redeposited after the event’s end.