City of Mount Vernon Welcomes Audit from State Comptroller
State Comptroller’s Office to focus on Internal Controls
Mount Vernon, NY — Today, February 26, 2020, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and the Division of Local Government and School Accountability selected Mount Vernon to be audited. The focus of this audit will center around internal controls. Since taking office in January, Mayor Patterson-Howard has been reaching out to the NYS Comptroller office requesting an audit of the city’s finances. Mayor Patterson-Howard has requested an audit of all city finances, this includes the Industrial Development Agency (IDA), Urban Renewal Agency (URA) and Board of Water Supply.
The City of Mount Vernon is in a dire situation as Comptroller Deborah Reynolds has removed access to the city’s finances from every department. Furthermore, at the end of 2019 Comptroller Reynolds installed an illegal firewall and removed the financial records from the city servers. The severe lack of transparency from the Comptroller’s office regarding records of actuals requested by both the executive and legislative branches of government has raised several red flags.
There are grave concerns surrounding payroll, Millions in unclaimed grants and federal aid including $1,900,000 dollars for street repaving. The combination of political infighting last year and the continued dereliction of duty on behalf of Comptroller Reynolds, who has blocked access to important financial data essential for the completion of the audits from 2016–2019 is troubling. The City of Mount Vernon welcomes the NYS State Comptroller’s office and the audit of city finances.
Mayor Patterson-Howard said, “Time’s up for fiscal mismanagement and corruption. We welcome an audit of the city’s finances, including the IDA, URA and questions around Board of Water Supply funds. We have grave concerns about the lack of transparency and cooperation from the Mount Vernon Comptrollers’ office. Her continued failure to transfer monies from city accounts to the URA paid to the city by HUD for the use of the URA is troubling. These actions are crippling the agency’s ability to make timely rent payments for services of our most vulnerable residents and fails to satisfy our contractual payments to community-based partners who provide critical services to Mount Vernon. We welcome an audit from the NYS Comptroller’s office, the citizens of Mount Vernon deserve an accounting of each dollar spent. We look forward to taking the necessary steps to address corrective actions that arise from the audit.”
City Council President Lisa A. Copeland said, “The lack of transparency from Comptroller Reynolds has been alarming, her inability to work with the council and administration to close the audits are a critical concern. We are encouraged by the audit of the City of Mount Vernon from NYS Comptroller DiNapoli’s office and stand ready to assist.”
Finance & Planning Chair, Councilman Marcus A. Griffith said, “We are excited and looking forward to NYS Comptroller DiNapoli coming in to assess our financial situation. We have had increased difficulties working with our City Comptroller to get an accurate view of our financials. As chair of Finance and Planning for the City Council we look forward to assisting the auditors with moving this process along.”
