Audit Objective
Did the Hillsdale-Copake Fire District (District) Board of Commissioners (Board) provide adequate oversight of disbursements?
Audit Period
January 1, 2024 to May 31, 2025
Understanding the Audit Area
A fire district board must provide adequate oversight of disbursements to help ensure financial accountability, prevent the misuse of fire district funds, maintain compliance with legal requirements and build public trust.
The District made disbursements totaling $342,497 during the audit period.
Audit Summary
The Board generally provided adequate oversight of disbursements. We determined that all disbursements were:
- Properly authorized by the Board through the claims audit process,
- Adequately supported, and
- Made for an appropriate District purpose.
However, the Board did not always ensure that its adopted written disbursement policies were followed. For example:
- Ten checks totaling $249,004, requiring the District Treasurer’s (Treasurer’s) and Chairman of the Board’s (Chairman’s) signatures had only the Treasurer’s signature.
- One check for $4,267 payable to the Treasurer was not signed by the Chairman, but instead by the Treasurer herself.
In addition, periodic comparisons were not made between canceled check images to the list of approved checks by someone without the check-signing authority.
Officials raise the risk of an unauthorized or improper disbursement when they do not ensure that checks requiring two signatures have both signatures, or when they allow an individual authorized to sign checks issued to themselves. Further, when someone without check-signing authority does not compare canceled checks images to the list of approved checks, the risk of unauthorized disbursements is increased.
The report includes three recommendations that, if implemented, will improve the District’s disbursements process. District officials generally agreed with our recommendations and 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 (OSC) 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. Pursuant to Section 181-b of New York State Town Law (Town Law), a written corrective action plan (CAP) that addresses the findings and recommendations in this report must be prepared and forwarded to our office within 90 days. To the extent practicable, implementation of the CAP must begin by the end of the next fiscal year. 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