by Matt Hampton
While the district got caught practicing a handful of process that the state comptroller’s offices believed were resulting in overspending, DiNapoli did not hammer Franklin Square.
Overall the comptroller’s office made a handful of recommendations about how the district could run smoother, which were welcomed by local education officials.
“I think we did very well in the audit, we’re happy with the results,” said Franklin Square Board of Education President Joe Armocida. “We were thankful for the minor things that they did find [during the audit period.]”
By law, school districts are required to use a request for proposal (RFP) when contracting services — anything from building a school addition to hiring a cleaning crew. In some cases, when it came to purchasing professional services, auditors found that “[d]istrict officials did not consistently enforce these policies and procedures.
In addition, Franklin Square’s check-signing practices came under fire.
“We reviewed 20 checks, totaling $293,282, and found that they were all signed by the Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction using her own electronic signature, which is locked in her office,” the audit team stated in its report. “This process is not in compliance with Education Law and increases the risk that inappropriate checks will be processed.”
Overall, DiNapoli’s team found that Franklin Square was playing too fast and loose with the people who were authorized to sign checks. A process that, according to Armocida, is now being remedied.
“We’ve spent some time now rewriting some board policies, and everything should be in place by September,” he said. “Within the next two to three months, whatever hasn’t already been corrected, will be corrected.”
One issue that came up in Franklin Square’s audit was the classification of a lawyer who worked on behalf of the district. Last year, during an investigation by state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, school districts throughout Long Island — and in particular Nassau County — were chastised and worse, threatened with fraud charges, for allowing lawyers who spent years working with the school district to collect pensions as if they were district employees.
Cuomo made it clear at the time that lawyers doing work for the district were to be classified as independent contractors who were paid in billable hours by schools, not the same as salaried employees like teachers and administrators, who do qualify for pension plans.
Franklin Square, like other districts, was caught with a lawyer on payroll, but according both to DiNapoli’s audit and Armocida, the lawyer was correctly classified before any taxpayer money changed hands.
“As soon as [the story broke] we complied with whatever the regulations were, and what they were changed to,” Armocida said. “At that point we put in paperwork to the New York State Retirement System, in that we were taking [the lawyer] out of the system.”
Armocida said that ultimately, while the misclassification was a mistake, it never cost the district — or taxpayers — any money, because the lawyer in question did not retire nor attempt to claim pension funds at any point. In fact, he said, the district received a notice recently that funds which had been earmarked for the pension plan have since been refunded to the school itself.
As for the rest of the concerns in the audit, Armocida said he would estimate that “probably 95 percent of the stuff in the report has already been corrected.”
In the audit itself, DiNapoli’s audit team goes so far as to praise the district for its prompt action to correct what the state comptroller’s office believed to be substandard practices.
“We applaud the steps that district officials have taken, subsequent to the start of our audit, to use RFP’s for acquiring professional services,” the audit said. The team cautioned that it has not had the opportunity to review Franklin Square’s new system.
