Audit Objective
Did the Lake Mohegan Fire District (District) Board of Commissioners (Board) use a competitive process to procure goods and services?
Audit Period
January 1, 2024 – September 30, 2025
We extended our audit period to February 1, 2023, to review the purchase of pumper trucks.
Understanding the Audit Area
A board of fire commissioners and its officials should seek competition for goods and services to help guard against favoritism, extravagance and fraud, and help ensure public funds are used in an economical manner while allowing interested vendors a fair and equal opportunity to compete.
During the audit period, the District purchased 112 goods and services totaling $6.2 million.
Audit Summary
The Board and District officials did not always use a competitive process to procure goods and services in accordance with statutory requirements in New York State General Municipal Law (GML), the District’s procurement policy or best practices. As a result, the Board and District officials lack assurance that procurements were made in a manner that promoted competition, transparency, free from favoritism and economical use of public funds. Adhering to GML and the District’s procurement policy enhances public confidence in the procurement process and helps serve the best interests of taxpayers.
The Board could not support, that a competitive method was used to obtain goods and services totaling $5.3 million, representing 85 percent of the procurements made during the audit period. The Board did not:
- Maintain documentation to support adherence to the piggybacking exception to competitive bidding, or obtain competitive bids for 10 purchases totaling $4.7 million as required in GML and the District’s procurement policy.
- Issue requests for proposals (RFPs) or use any other competitive process before procuring professional services from 12 vendors totaling $582,686 during the audit period.
- Obtain quotes for 13 purchases totaling $84,549, as required by the District’s procurement policy.
The report includes eight recommendations that, if implemented, will improve the District officials’ ability to procure goods and services in accordance with statutory requirements, District policy and procurement best practices and enhance oversight and accountability and help ensure that goods and services are obtained through fair and competitive processes. District officials generally agreed with our findings and indicated they plan to initiate corrective action. Appendix C includes our comment on an issue District officials raised in their response letter.
We conducted this audit pursuant to Article V, Section 1 of the State Constitution and the Office of the New York State Comptroller's (OSC) authority as set forth in Article 3 of GML. Our methodology and standards are included in Appendix D.
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.