ERIE COUNTY
Seniors’ cash accounts are safe, auditors say
Erie County auditors found that the Senior Services Department took frequent shortcuts in handling the personal cash accounts of its elderly clients, but the auditors gave the overall program a passing grade.
Auditors found the Senior Services Department’s own procedures weren’t followed in 44 percent of the transactions sampled from a 2z-year period.
Still, Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz said, his auditors found no theft or malfeasance, and he believes the “protective services for adults” program has been “adequately safeguarded.”
The Senior Services Department handles the personal cash for 281 elderly citizens, often those in nursing homes.
When a senior citizen needs cash, a county case manager will draw money from the person’s account by receiving a check made out in the case manager’s name.
The case manager will cash the check at a bank and deliver the cash, auditors explained.
In many of the errors, checks were printed without a supervisor’s required approval on a request form. Or a supervisor may have approved the form but changes were later made to the form, said Michael Szukala, the chief auditor for Poloncarz.
“The potential for abuse is so large here, because a number of people for whom the county holds money in trust have dementia,” he said, “and the other part of it is, this is all cash here.”
Auditors sampled transactions from a period that began Jan. 1, 2006, when Joel A. Giambra was county executive, and ended May 31 of this year, five months after County Executive Chris Collins took office. In July, the comptroller’s accounting staff took over the duty of writing the checks.
Auditors also could not find records of the assets that the county sold for the elderly as they moved into nursing homes.
Poloncarz said he gave the program a “clean” audit, and Collins spokesman Grant Loomis later said the audit “validates the hard work our Senior Services professionals perform every day.”
