A recently released audit report from the New York State Comptroller’s Office has found the Town of Sodus failed to provide required financial documents over the course of several years.

The report says the Town Board did not perform an annual audit of the Supervisor’s records and reports in accordance with Town Law for fiscal year 2024.

The comptroller’s office also found the Supervisor had not prepared and filed the required Annual Financial Reports (AFR) for the last four fiscal years.

In a letter dated April 7th, Town officials responded to the comptroller’s office indicating they agreed with the findings and said they had begun corrective actions to address the issues. 

During the audit, Town Supervisor Scott Johnson and the town’s bookkeeper told auditors that "a server failure in August 2024 resulted in the loss of the 2024 and prior years’ accounting data and backups, except for the abstract and payroll-related data that were stored independently and were not affected."

The report indicates that "Although Board members received monthly abstracts showing disbursements and reports listing month-end cash balances for each fund, the cash balances provided on these reports were incomplete and inaccurate.

For example, the December 2024 report:

• Under-reported five cash accounts totaling $159,584,

• Over-reported one cash account by $15,433, and

• Did not include two cash accounts totaling $98,076."

The report says that the inaccurate numbers may have impeded the board from having "effective financial oversight." 

In a response to The Times seeking clarification, Town Supervisor Johnson said the cash accounts the report refers to are the water districts and their debt service. 

"This is one area of the budget where the board does not have to determine the following year’s numbers because it is already laid out through a debt schedule; provided to us each year.  That schedule tells us the amount that must be raised in taxes for each district and the amounts that must be paid by each district. 

The report that was provided to the board, with the 2024 year-end balances for each account, didn’t have the correct numbers for those districts.  They were not updated on the spreadsheet, which led to the OSC’s statement about the discrepancies.  If I had taken the time to update them on my report to the board, there would be no differences.  That is on me; allowing myself to be lackadaisical in knowing that these districts take care of themselves, and therefore, not showing in the report how the numbers reflect the bank statements, like I do with every other account, which were all accurate."

The auditors also determined that several highway employees were overpaid a total of $1,781 due to errors in how their overtime was calculated.

The report does not indicate any criminal wrongdoing, but instead includes 11 recommendations in response to the findings to improve transparency moving forward.

Supervisor Johnson told The Times "We are currently in the process of writing up our Corrective Action Plan; addressing each finding within the OSC report and how they can be fixed.  We will have it completed, and sent to the State, before the end of the month."

You can read the full report here.