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Audit finds procurement and timekeeping lapses at Albany County Airport Authority; $1.5M in airline incentives not documented to board
Summary
Tom Smith of accounting firm EFPR told the joint committee that a compliance review of the Albany County Airport Authority identified purchases approved without board sign-off, split invoices that avoided a $50,000 approval threshold, roughly $1.5 million in airline incentive credits without documented board approval and timekeeping irregularities tied to manual logins and parking-record mismatches.
Tom Smith, a partner at EFPR (the accounting firm engaged by the Albany County Airport Authority), presented the results of a compliance review covering procurement and time-and-attendance records from Jan. 1, 2022, through Dec. 31, 2024.
Smith summarized four principal findings: the former CEO approved purchases without board approval; several payments were broken into smaller disbursements to avoid a $50,000 board-approval threshold; airline incentive credits totaling approximately $1,500,000 across the review period lacked documented board approval; and a sample of time-and-attendance records showed irregularities tied to manual logins and logouts.
Procurement: Smith said the authority’s procurement policy (required by New York public-authority law) sets a $50,000 threshold for CEO-plus-board approval. Smith’s review of samples and the highest-dollar vendors found some vendors had valid contracts, but the auditors identified multiple payments over $50,000 that lacked board approval and several instances where payments to the same vendor were split into smaller transactions that individually fell under the threshold. Examples cited in the presentation included payments to Dustbusters Cleaning, CRISO Demolition, Flooring Environmental…
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