The City of Buffalo comptroller’s office presented its Annual Audit Plan for fiscal year 2026 to the Common Council Committee on Finance on July 1, 2025, saying auditors will prioritize high-risk revenue and expenditure areas and follow up on prior findings.

Deputy Comptroller Delano Dow told the committee the audit division’s mission is to “protect, report and strengthen the city finances” and to obtain “sufficient, appropriate evidence” to support audit findings and conclusions. City Auditor Sam Bruno reviewed audits completed in fiscal 2025 and described planned work for 2026, including follow-ups and new audits intended to increase oversight capacity after two recent hires.

The nut graf: auditors emphasized financial-risk-driven selection criteria and flagged payroll and overtime in the Police Department, Fire Department and Department of Public Works as high priorities because their budgets and overtime costs represent substantial portions of the city’s expenditures.

Bruno said the division will continue an informational payroll review and follow-ups on previously audited accounts, and noted specific planned work: a second follow-up on cell-phone and wireless-device expenses (about 500 devices and roughly $220,000 in combined expense for fiscal 2023–24), a possible full audit of payroll and overtime in the police, fire and DPW departments, and renewed testing of seized-funds internal controls at the Buffalo Police Department (previous testing found controls were generally strong). He said recent hires — including one with Big Four experience and another with federal audit familiarity — should increase audit capacity.

Deputy Comptroller Dow and Bruno described the financial-risk framework the office uses to choose audits. Dow cited large revenue/expenditure lines as higher risk from a financial perspective: state aid (cited around $166,000,000), sales tax (about $115,000,000), property tax (about $181,000,000), fringe-benefits (about $101,000,000), police budget (about $106,000,000) and fire budget (about $74,000,000). Debt service was listed as a lower risk (about $36,000,000) because it is secured by property-tax set-asides.

Several council members pressed for more frequent, in-depth reviews of overtime in the three public-safety and public-works departments. Council members noted prior comprehensive audits occurred many years ago (police payroll and overtime audit referenced in roughly 2016; fire audit in roughly 2017–2018) and urged the auditor’s office to prioritize analysis of what is driving overtime and potential fiscal impacts on pensions. Bruno said the office plans to extract payroll data from the city’s financial “cube” and pivot the data for analysis, then follow up with department leadership to understand operational drivers before proposing recommendations.

Bruno said the auditors sometimes defer a full audit when external single-audit work or timing makes a city-level audit redundant; he cited possible deferral of a comprehensive ARPA internal-controls audit to fiscal year 2027 because federal single-audit work will cover much of that compliance review in the near term. He also said Munis/ Tyler software issues have complicated reconciliation in the City Clerk’s office and have been the subject of prior follow-ups.

Council members asked about staffing and pay; Bruno and Dow said two auditors were hired and one senior CPA-level internal-audit administrator position remains vacant (salary range cited roughly $73,000–$86,000). Dow said the comptroller can reallocate existing budget lines to fund additional personnel or request a salary ordinance through the administration and Common Council as needed.

On timing, Bruno said the auditors will finalize fiscal-year payroll data now that the year has closed and expect to begin focused inquiries within weeks to months; exact completion dates were not specified. He described typical audit workload planning as a function of available staff hours and the mix of full audits and follow-ups, estimating the office expects roughly four full audits and one to two follow-ups in the coming year given current staffing and experience levels.

Ending: Council members expressed support for strengthening staffing if necessary and urged frequent updates to the committee. The committee closed discussion and moved to table further action on the audit plan pending administration follow-up and scheduling.