The New York State comptroller’s office has completed another audit of the Montauk Fire District, alleging that the district overcompensated its 17 paid emergency responders and failed to resolve discrepancies in time-clock activity for three of those employees.
This audit report marks the second time in about six months that the comptroller’s office has uncovered errors that point to mismanagement in the fire district. Last December, the comptroller found that officials failed to file three years of mandatory reports, lacked oversight of the district’s length-of-service award program, and gave unauthorized longevity and overtime pay to employees.
The comptroller again cited “a lack of oversight and inadequate controls” in finding this time that 13 advanced life support (A.L.S.) employees were overpaid by $9,386 and that three of these workers clocked in and out at times that overlapped with their paid work for the neighboring Amagansett Fire District.
Montauk Fire District officials have partially disputed the audit findings, saying the employees were entitled to the sum alleged to have been overpaid.
According to the report, the minutes of commissioners’ meetings show that the five volunteer commissioners voted on March 14, 2023, to give the A.L.S. crew a $2 pay raise. Subsequently, payroll records show those employees received a $3 raise, and that the raise went into effect a week earlier than the minutes dictated.
“This error went undetected because, although the chairman was responsible for reviewing the payroll, he did not check the calculations or otherwise verify that A.L.S. employee hourly rates were correct before certifying the payroll each pay period,” the comptroller’s report states.
However, the vice chairman of the board of commissioners, Richard Schoen, responded by saying the board did in fact authorize a $3-per-hour pay raise and that the error occurred when the minutes inaccurately stated it was to be $2. “The board members specifically recall making the increase $3 per hour because they believed that neighboring districts with whom it competes for personnel were at the higher amount,” Mr. Schoen wrote in a letter to the comptroller’s office. “Clearly the employees were paid the correct wage, but the correct wage was not accurately recorded in the minutes by the secretary-treasurer.”
The audit report also cited examples of discrepancies in time-clock activity for three Montauk A.L.S. employees who also work for the Amagansett Fire District, and are supposed to be clocking in and out in Montauk using a biometric device that scans a worker’s finger.
“We determined that the A.L.S. employees only sporadically used the finger reader to record when the employee clocked in or out of work,” the audit report says. “Instead, the employees often relied on the use of manual sign-in sheets to record time worked for the district.” These two sets of records “often did not match,” yet the secretary-treasurer “paid A.L.S. employees using the manual sign-in sheets without first reconciling the times to available finger-reader records.”
This finding, which involved a total overpayment of just $246, led the comptroller’s office to seek payroll reports from the Amagansett Fire District for the employees in question. “Based on records obtained from the neighboring Amagansett Fire District, the employees may have been able to overlap their shifts at the two fire districts,” the report states.
The comptroller identified 28 instances of A.L.S. employees either leaving 15 minutes early or arriving 15 minutes late, as recorded by the finger-reader time clock, while manual sign-in records showed they worked their full shifts. In one instance, an A.L.S. employee “clocked in simultaneously” in both Montauk and Amagansett “for a full 12-hour shift for which he was paid $450.” Documents analyzed by the comptroller’s office show that in that instance, which occurred on Feb. 17, 2024, there was a two-and-a-half hour emergency call in Montauk to which that employee responded. However, “it remains unclear whether this employee worked his entire shift at the [Montauk] district or if the district may have paid this employee for time actually worked at the Amagansett Fire District that day.”
Mr. Schoen disputed this finding, too, saying that the Montauk commissioners believe that the error stemmed from inaccurate records on Amagansett’s part. “Montauk cannot be responsible for time adjustments made by another district to address time owed by that other district to that employee. We have no way to track that,” Mr. Schoen told the comptroller’s office.
“With that being said,” Mr. Schoen continued, “staff and the board made the mistake of permitting employees to both sign in on the computerized finger reader and the manual time sheets and to a certain extent ignoring their obligations to use the computerized finger reader. This will not be permitted in the future.”
The comptroller’s office recommended six specific steps the Montauk commissioners could take to ensure that these errors are not repeated, including working with the Amagansett Fire District to resolve bookkeeping discrepancies and consulting with its attorneys to address the overpayments.
