Audit Objective
Did the Town of Lorraine (Town) Supervisor (Supervisor) maintain complete, accurate, and up-to-date accounting records and reports to allow the Town Board (Board) to properly manage the Town’s financial operations?
Audit Period
January 1, 2023 – November 8, 2024.
We extended our audit period to January 1, 2022 to review certain balance sheet accounts and reviewed the Town’s 2020 through 2024 Annual Financial Report (AFR) filings as of June 23, 2025.
Understanding the Program
The Supervisor, as chief fiscal officer, is responsible for receiving, disbursing and retaining custody of Town money; maintaining complete, accurate and up-to-date accounting records; providing financial reports to the Board and preparing and filing the Town’s AFR.
As of December 31, 2023, the Town had six bank accounts with combined cash balances totaling $784,762. The Town’s 2024 budgeted appropriations totaled approximately $1.7 million.
It’s important for the Supervisor to maintain complete, accurate and up-to-date records and provide the Board with monthly financial reports with reconciled cash balances so the Board can properly and effectively monitor and manage the Town’s financial operations throughout the year.
Audit Summary
The Supervisor did not maintain complete, accurate, and up-to-date accounting records and reports. As a result, the Board lacked reliable information necessary to manage the Town’s financial operations.
The Supervisor did not:
Identify and resolve discrepancies between recorded cash balances and adjusted bank balances, in part, because she did not perform bank reconciliations in an accurate manner.
As of December 31, 2023, three bank account cash balances totaling $105,091 were not included in the accounting records and the remaining three bank accounts’ adjusted bank balances exceeded the recorded cash balances by $513,735. We identified about $440,000 in recordkeeping errors that contributed to this difference between the cash in the bank and the records.
- Provide the Board with monthly balance sheet reports that would have identified an imbalance between the Town’s assets and the liabilities and fund balance. The differences were mainly due to recordkeeping errors and revenue and expenditure activity that was not properly closed to fund balance at the end of the 2020 through 2023 fiscal years.
- Comply with New York State General Municipal Law (GML) Section 30, which requires the Supervisor to file the Town’s AFR with New York State Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) within 60 days following the fiscal year’s end. After we initiated our audit, the Supervisor filed the 2020 through 2023 AFRs; however, the 2024 AFR remained outstanding as of June 23, 2025.
The lack of accurate monthly and annual financial reports with reconciled cash balances inhibits the Board’s ability to properly and effectively monitor and manage the Town’s financial operations throughout the year, assess the Town’s financial standing at year-end and make informed financial decisions.
The audit report includes 10 recommendations that, if implemented, will improve the Supervisor’s records and reports and the Board’s oversight of financial operations. Town officials agreed with our recommendations, and their response is included in Appendix B.
We conducted this audit pursuant to Article V, Section 1 of the State Constitution and OSC’s authority as set forth in Article 3 of GM. Our methodology and standards are included in Appendix C.
The Board has the responsibility to initiate corrective action. A written corrective action plan (CAP) that addresses the findings and recommendations in this report should be prepared and provided to our office within 90 days, pursuant to Section 35 of GM. 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 in the Town Clerk’s office.