MONTICELLO – Sullivan County should establish procedures to verify that department heads are either working or charging appropriate leave accruals, a state audit of the county’s time and attendance said.
The report for the period January 1, 2015 through October 26, 2016, said the county could improve oversight for leave usage by department heads.
It said at the time of the study, county officials said the director of probation was under investigation for taking leave from work without charging his leave accruals. There were 174 work days when the director did not log in to his work computer and did not charge leave. County officials said there was no evidence he was working during those days.
As a result, the director was placed on unpaid administrative leave and reached a retirement settlement with the county that 71 days would be deducted from his remaining leave balances,
The audit also found that some administrators, supervisor and department heads have the ability to manually edit punch in and out times on the electronic timekeeping system. Auditors identified over 52,800 edits in all 31 departments during their study, including 373 employees across 24 departments that had 40 or more edits,
The state officials said the county should establish policies and procedures to ensure employees have appropriate electronic timekeeping system rights and prohibit employees from modifying their own time records.
The state audit came about following the county’s internal discovery in July 2016 of the discrepancies in leave usage by the former probation director, County Legislature Chairman Luis Alvarez wrote in a letter of response to the state comptroller’s audit.
“County management swiftly addressed the issues identified by our internal investigation,” Alvarez wrote. “Since January 2017, several corrective actions have been put in place in addition to a restructuring of the probation department’s leadership. The county has implemented clearer policies for operations, and the individuals identified in the report as supervision of the probation department are no longer employed by the County of Sullivan.”
