“A state audit of a Duanesburg fire district has found accounting shortfalls that include unauthorized cash disbursements and an alleged conflict of interest in some purchases.
The 1986 audit of the Quaker Street Fire District cites four instances in which cash disbursements endorsed by the district treasurer were made from fire district accounts but not fully redeposited or recorded in the treasurer’s records.
“In two instances the entire amount of the check was recorded in the treasurer’s records as a cash disbursement with the marginal note ‘owe.’ For the other two checks a portion was redeposited with a marginal note ‘owe’ for the difference between the amount of the check and the redeposited amount,” the report said.
“On Nov. 18, 1987, at the time of our examination, the treasurer deposited $1,970 in a fire district bank account and indicated to us that this covered the amount owed the district, plus interest of $100,” the report said.
G. David Foster, chairman of the Quaker Street Board of Fire Commissioners, said the matter involved the former treasurer making unauthorized loans. To his knowledge, Foster said, no criminal charges had been filed in the matter.
Foster declined to comment further regarding the incident or to identify the official, who has since resigned. But the state comptroller’s office on Friday identified the former treasurer as Lola Williams of Schenectady.
“I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I needed the money and I was going to pay it back and did,” Williams said Friday when contacted at home. “I’m sorry … I just shouldn’t have done it.”
Williams, who had been the district treasurer for about four years, said she resigned in December before the audit findings were released.
Karl LaPoint, a spokesman for the state comptroller’s office, gave a similiar assessment of what had happened. He would neither confirm nor deny whether the state’s findings have been forwarded to law enforcement officials for possible further action.
To avoid similiar problems in the future, Foster said two signatures – those of the treasurer and the chairman of the Board of Fire Commissioners – are now required to make cash withdrawals. Before, Foster said, either could have made withdrawals by signing alone.
The report also found that at least two fire district purchases, totaling about $350, were made from the general store owned by Fire Commissioner Dennis Wolfe, which the audit said was a conflict of interest.
“No municipal officer or employee shall have an interest in any contract with the municipality of which he is an officer” that has the power or duty to negotiate, authorize or approve payments, the report reads. “Commissioner Wolfe has such powers or duties. Therefore these purchases constitute a prohibited conflict of interest” under provisions of General Municipal Law.
The report also said the fire district had not established a written investment policy.
Regarding the purchases, both Wolfe and Foster said they represent gasoline bought during 1986 and 1987 from his store, which is located just across the street from the firehouse at the intersection of Routes 7 and 395.
“The fire company has always purchased gas from my store because it was the closest. We never realized there was a problem with that. But we have since ceased from selling it to the fire district,” Wolfe said. Steps are being taken to correct the accounting and procedural shortfalls, he said.”
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Thurman, Ken. Albany Times Union. 3 July 1988.