State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli announced Kristina Hand was sentenced in federal court for stealing $34,000 from the Morris Central School District in Otsego County.

Hand, 47, of Morris, pled guilty last September to two counts of federal program theft, for stealing from a school district that received federal funds. She was sentenced Thursday to two years of probation and ordered to serve 50 hours of community service. Hand was also ordered to pay $34,000 in restitution.

Local government sales tax collections in April grew by 45.7 percent over the same month in 2020, State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli announced today. Collections totaled $1.5 billion, up $464 million from April of last year.

“The strong collections in April show that the economy is gaining steam, thanks in part to federal aid, more lifts in restrictions and a climb in the vaccination rates,” DiNapoli said. “However, local governments must monitor changing economic conditions and continue to be vigilant when it comes to their finances.”

New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli today announced the following local government audits were issued.

Auditors conducted reviews of 20 adopted budgets of various counties, cities, towns and villages across the state to assess whether local officials adequately considered the impact of the pandemic on their financial operations while developing their 2021 fiscal year budgets. Below are the findings of some of the communities reviewed:

State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli and New York State Police Acting Superintendent Kevin P. Bruen announced the arrests of former state police mechanics Jeffrey Rapasadi and David Relyea in the theft of nearly $30,000 in auto parts and supplies from the state. The thefts allegedly took place between April 2015 and October 2020.

Identity thefts in New York surged during the pandemic with more than 67,000 complaints filed statewide in 2020, which was 85 percent more than the previous year and more than four times the annual total from a decade earlier, according to a report released today by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.

New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli today announced the following local government audits were issued.

The total cost of overtime in 2020 at state agencies reached an all-time high at more than $850 million, continuing an upward trend over the last decade and spurred on by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report released today by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. Total overtime hours of 19 million increased 3.9 percent and total overtime earnings increased 5.5 percent from 2019.

The state Gaming Commission has made only limited progress fixing problems with its monitoring of casinos, especially with its failure to collect millions in oversight fees from casinos, according to a follow-up report released today by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. The problems were first identified in an audit DiNapoli released in 2020 that found the commission had not collected $13 million owed by casinos.

New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli today released a statement on behalf of the New York State Common Retirement Fund (Fund) to fellow Amazon shareholders in advance of the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting on May 26, 2021.

New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli today announced the following local government audits were issued.