Miller Place district changes after audit

The Miller Place school district has changed the way it reports time worked for a handful of employees after a state comptroller's audit revealed they had mistakenly received a large number of credits for hours they didn't work.

No one received extra pay or will receive additional retirement benefits because of the errors, the school district said.

Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's office, in a routine audit, found that during a 31-month period ending Oct. 31, 2010, two employees -- the treasurer and the clerk -- erroneously received credit for a total of 427 days that they did not work. The treasurer was credited for 309 days and the clerk for 117, the audit showed.

Two part-time custodians, whose records were examined from April 2008 through March 2009, were over-credited for a total of 107 days -- with one of them receiving extra credit for 70 days and the other for 37 days. A third custodian was over-credited for slightly less than one day in April 2010.

Credits are often used to calculate retirement benefits.

School officials said they erred in that they counted and reported the days served based on whether the employees spent any time at all in the district on a given day.

The comptroller recalculated the hours worked on the basis of a 40-hour workweek. Using this method, auditors found that the clerk had worked 199 days, the treasurer 45, one custodian 102 and the other 112.

While the district had reported the days worked to the retirement system, interim Superintendent Susan Hodun said Wednesday that none of the employees will get increased benefits. The treasurer and custodians have other, full-time jobs, and therefore their time at Miller Place will not be counted toward their retirement, she said. The clerk's record has been amended to reflect fewer workdays.

Hodun said the error was inadvertent and the district changed its policies to correct the problem. From now on, she said, an administrator will sign off on all such reports.

Otherwise, the comptroller's office credited the district for its handling of cash disbursements after examining more than $64 million of expenditures, finding all were properly authorized.

Deputy Superintendent Marianne Higuera said the eight-month audit was extensive and yielded few mistakes. "We are very willing to correct the reporting and move forward," she said. "They looked at our cash disbursements and did not find one discrepancy. All of that was in good order."