Former Hurley town supervisor Melinda McKnight has derided town supervisor Mike Boms’ claims of “missing financials.” She blamed the gaps on the town’s contracted bookkeeping firm, RBT, and said she had been working to correct them.
“They failed to provide final financial reports to the town in February, April and June 2023. We did receive a financial report for July 2023, which is what I used as the starting point for all the manual calculations I did and presented to the town board,” McKnight explained.
McKnight complained that Boms had never asked her for assistance. “Boms never asked a single question of me, and he never responded to the emails I sent providing information on my way out,” she said.
Lacking information from payroll provider ADP, the town’s own accounting software would not run a needed report without payroll data and deductions.
“It took time to work with ADP and Williamson [the software company] to get us the correct data in the right format to enter,” McKnight said.
Her solution had been to have the town bookkeeper run a different report of the expenses by budget line and then do manual calculations from the July statements. “Which is how I ended up with the numbers,” she said. “I also had her run the deposit report and I was able to get balances by going into the bank accounts for that information.”
McKnight conceded “a number of challenges,” but said good progress was being made. Her administration had been in the process of bringing the accounting in-house to save about $60,000 per year and to prevent errors caused by outsourced work, she said.
At its February 27 meeting, the town board authorized a new contract with the accounting firm UHY for an internal audit. It appointed Wendy Trojak senior account clerk to help sort out the books.
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