Onondaga County

Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney today called upon Comptroller Bob Antonacci to cooperate
with an independent audit firm attempting to review County procedures for processing and recording
payroll transactions. The proposed audit is in response to comments and recommendations made by
the County’s outside auditor in a Management Letter dated April 13, 2016.

“The audit firm chosen by the Comptroller’s own RFP process wrote a letter identifying concerns with
access and security rights in our payroll processing system, while making specific recommendations to
reduce the risk of undetected payroll errors” said County Executive Joanie Mahoney. “The person who
calls himself ‘transparent’ and ‘the watchdog’ used the excuse of his taxpayer funded lawsuit to refuse
cooperation with an important accounting review that has been attempted since June. The lawsuit is
now over and yet the Comptroller still refuses to comply. His attempts to hide his actions from the
public are the exact opposite of the professional standards the rest of the county adheres to and are
completely unacceptable.”

The Onondaga County Legislature passed a resolution in August requiring the Comptroller to comply
with the independent audit of payroll procedures and controls commissioned in response to the
Management Letter comments of April 13. To date, the Comptroller continues to refuse to cooperate
and in a classic example of political hypocrisy stated, “Pursuing this audit after the Judge’s reading of his
decision from the bench would be a waste of taxpayer money as the issue has been adjudicated.” In
fact, the judge was not asked by either party to evaluate the County’s payroll controls, which is what the
outside auditor is being hired to do. It is completely hypocritical to spend half a million taxpayer dollars
on a politically motivated lawsuit and then claim that an independent look into his actions is not worth
it. If the Comptroller truly believes his actions were proper then why does he resist an independent
review?

In a communication received by the County Executive’s office, the independent audit firm expressed the
concern that “if we get too far into December we might not be able to complete this project before
12/31/2016 and you would be out of this year’s audit period and therefore technically would not have
complied with your intent to respond to [the] management letter comments…”

They also added their staff is ready to begin on December 5th. The Comptroller should agree to let their
work begin and should provide full cooperation.