By Teresa Mulvaney
ALBANY — A volunteer fire company in Lancaster spent about $1.65 million expanding a fire station it had budgeted at $1 million. A fire district in Le Roy spent about $17,000 that state auditors call unnecessary or inappropriate, much of it on meals, snacks and travel. And at three Western New York school districts, door badges and key fobs stayed active for people who no longer worked there. In one case the badge holder had been gone since 2009.
Those findings come from a batch of local audits by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli’s Division of Local Government and School Accountability. The office listed them in an Oct. 27 release. The Western New York reports reach into Erie, Genesee and Orleans counties. They arrived alongside two statewide reviews. One found that 20 fire districts statewide had not fully carried out three of every four recommendations from earlier state audits.
Each audited board must now file a written corrective action plan with the comptroller within 90 days. Officials pushed back hard in some cases. The Town Line Fire Department’s leaders formally disputed the central finding against them.
Town Line: a $1 million plan, a $1.65 million bill
The Town Line Fire Department audit (2026M-30) covers Jan. 1, 2022 through Nov. 19, 2025. Town Line is a not-for-profit fire company that provides fire protection and emergency services within the Towns of Lancaster and Alden in Erie County. It has about 26 active volunteers, 11 pieces of apparatus and two fire stations, according to the report. Its 2025 budget was $965,850.
The project was an expansion of Fire Station No. 1. The board and membership put $1 million into the 2022 budget for it. Auditors found the board set that figure without first getting cost estimates or issuing a request for proposals. In 2023, after choosing a construction management and general contracting company, the department raised the budget by $300,000 to $1.3 million. The plan was to pay entirely from accumulated, unspent department funds.
Auditors traced 37 payments totaling about $1.65 million, roughly $346,000 more than the revised budget. Their breakdown:
- About $1.16 million under the signed general contract, awarded without competition, a written RFP or the three written proposals the department’s own purchasing policy requires.
- About $215,000 in 10 change orders from the general contractor. These included about $91,000 for gear room, washroom and shower room work, about $80,000 for a heated concrete pad meant to cut volunteer snow-removal hours, and smaller items for painting, stormwater, demolition and exterior lighting.
- About $11,000 in additional work by the general contractor.
- About $259,000 in unplanned work by other vendors. The largest items were a $150,000 standby generator, $50,000 in heated-pad work, a $20,000 fire alarm upgrade, $12,000 for security cameras and $9,000 for a door access system.
The report found the board could not document that it approved all 10 change orders. The paperwork that did exist showed the department president approved them. Auditors said the president and two board members were surprised by several change orders “because they believed the work had been included in the original construction contract.” The auditors checked the contract and found it was not.
The schedule also slipped. The building permit was issued Aug. 22, 2023. The contract called for completion within four months, around December 2023. The project finished in July 2025, nearly 19 months late. The contract had no provisions for what would happen if work fell behind. One result, according to the audit, was a change order of about $17,000 that included cleaning surface rust off structural beams. The beams had been ordered early and stored outdoors without protection during the delay.
According to the auditors, the president and two board members said that “due to the Board’s limited experience with capital projects, they relied on the construction management and general contracting company to manage and plan Project-related work.” The auditors replied that hiring an expert is appropriate, but that “the contractor does not necessarily have the Department’s best interest in mind.”
The department’s rebuttal
Town Line’s formal response is dated Aug. 31, 2026. It is signed by Stephen D. Coffed, chairman of the board of directors, and Jennifer M. Broska, president. It challenges the audit on most major points.
“The audit report concludes that the Board of Directors did not properly manage the project. We disagree with that statement,” the letter said. It says the board hired a company with an architect to design the project and oversee payments, and that a project manager oversaw construction, which it calls customary for “design build” projects.
On competitive bidding, the department wrote that seeking multiple quotes is “not required by law” but is good practice in most cases. It said the contractor it chose had worked on a prior department project “which came in on time and on budget.”
The department acknowledged that some work went ahead without a change order. “Unfortunately, it was just overlooked in the design,” the letter said.
On its own expertise, the board wrote: “We are not experts in the construction industry, but we hired one who oversaw the design and costs involved in the project.”
The board also objected to the auditors’ point that planning discussions were missing from its minutes. It argued that the Public Officers Law only requires resolutions and votes to be recorded. “Discussions are not relevant to the outcome. Instead, the outcome is what matters,” the letter said.
Still, the department committed to the fixes. “Finally, with regard to your suggestions, we once again agree that we will adhere to them in the future, regardless of whether we agree that they would have had any impact on this project,” it said.
The comptroller’s office answered in an appendix. “Department officials do not have to be experts in the construction industry to properly plan, monitor and oversee capital projects,” the auditors wrote. On the work the department said was missed in the design, they wrote: “We agree that work was ‘overlooked in the design,’ which reinforces our recommendations.”
The audit makes nine recommendations. They include adopting a written multiyear capital plan, building itemized project budgets, requiring board approval of every change order and following the purchasing policy’s competition rules.
Le Roy: meals, a snack table and a $1,200 receipt for ‘custom items’
In Genesee County, the Le Roy Fire District audit (2026M-59) looked at the district’s travel, meal and refreshment spending. Le Roy is a fire district, a taxing unit governed by elected commissioners under Town Law. Its 2025 budget was about $816,000.
Auditors reviewed 134 such purchases totaling about $23,350. They found exceptions in 117 purchases worth about $22,100. Overall, they concluded the district paid about $17,000 for purchases that were unnecessary or not appropriate, 74% of the category’s spending during the audit period. The findings include:
- 71 non-travel meal or refreshment purchases totaling about $13,800 that auditors said do not qualify as an “actual and necessary” district expense under Town Law Section 178-c.
- Two purchases totaling $2,800 for food for the fire chief’s annual department holiday dinner. The report notes that a district may pay for its annual inspection dinner, but says the holiday dinner had no pressing business need.
- Eight local restaurant meals of about $300 bought by the fire chief and first assistant chief. Both told auditors they discussed district business, but there was no documentation of an urgent need to meet at mealtime.
- 15 purchases of about $6,900 to routinely stock a breakroom cooler and snack table. The chiefs told auditors these supported firefighter recruitment and retention.
- 44 travel purchases of about $8,000 with no evidence of the prior approval or expense vouchers that district policy requires. In addition, 32 travel purchases exceeded policy limits by about $2,800. One example was a $460 lodging charge for the chief, $220 over the limit.
- 14 purchases of about $2,200 without itemized receipts. That included a food purchase backed only by a receipt listing two “custom items” totaling $1,200.
The district’s Board of Fire Commissioners responded on Aug. 18, 2026. It accepted parts of the findings. “The Board agrees that improvements can be made to the district’s documentation, travel procedures and oversight of expenditures,” the response said.
It rejected any suggestion of bad intent. “The district did not intentionally process claims without supporting documentation,” it said.
The sharpest disagreement was over the breakroom spending. “The Board does not consider the provision of reasonable, basic refreshments to volunteer firefighters to be a personal benefit or employee perk,” the commissioners wrote. They said volunteers spend time at the station on drills, training, calls and readiness, sometimes “for extended periods.”
The auditors replied that their report “does not refer to these purchases as ‘benefits or perks.’” Rather, they wrote, it “questions whether these purchases were actual and necessary expenditures permissible by Town Law.” On receipts, they said itemized documentation “is not a unique standard or expectation of OSC, but a universally accepted good business practice and fundamental internal control.”
The commissioners closed on a conciliatory note. “The Board is committed to strengthening its policies and oversight while continuing to support the volunteer firefighters who provide essential fire protection and emergency services to the residents of the Le Roy Fire District,” they wrote. The report says the chairman and two commissioners told auditors they would work with legal counsel on a written meals policy.
School door badges no one turned off
The third set of findings is about who can get into school buildings. Between December 2025 and May 2026, auditors examined electronic access systems at 20 school districts and BOCES statewide. Their summary report (2026-MS-2) found 1,564 unneeded active devices out of 17,195. All 20 schools had unneeded active accounts and devices. Nineteen did not properly track shared devices, and 12 had no written policy on who manages access at all.
Three of the 20 are in Western New York.
At Batavia City School District (S9-26-10), auditors found 16 employees holding 34 active key fobs. One custodial employee had four. Seven non-employee accounts were no longer needed, including two belonging to former employees who left in June 2009 and August 2024. Four of the 12 shared fobs kept at the primary school could not be found, and there was no record of who had them. The report says the district did not deactivate those four after auditors raised them, because officials believed substitutes had them.
Batavia Superintendent Jason Smith, board president John Reigle and business administrator Andrew Lang signed the district’s response. “We accept the findings outlined in this report and wish to provide additional context around the audit findings, with the understanding that this context is in no way an excuse or an attempt to evade responsibility,” they wrote. They cited turnover in the human resources office. They said only five former-employee fobs from August to December 2025 went undeactivated, 0.6% of 792 issued, and that the district has since collected duplicate fobs and written a deactivation procedure.
At Holley Central School District in Orleans County (S9-26-4), 14 employees had two or more fobs. The facilities director held three and a working supervisor held four, as emergency backups. Auditors flagged 27 non-employee fobs that were no longer needed, 18 of them issued to former contractors. The district disabled the 27 after the audit inquiry.
“The District acknowledges the finding regarding the need to strengthen management and monitoring of building access accounts and key fobs,” Superintendent Karri D. Schiavone wrote. She said the district has written procedures and will run three internal access audits a year, in September, January and June.
At North Collins Central School District in southern Erie County (S9-26-16), auditors found 17 unneeded active non-employee accounts. Eleven were individual badges, including eight for former employees, and six were shared badges. One former employee who left in January 2023 still had an active badge. The superintendent told auditors a June 2025 process to deactivate and reactivate all employee badges each year had been put in place, but auditors said it “was not operating effectively.”
“The district does not dispute the findings in the report,” Superintendent Scott J. Taylor wrote, adding that a corrective action plan will be posted on the district’s website.
The comptroller’s summary says the fix is mostly administrative. “Effective building access management is attainable with the Schools’ current systems and with little to no additional resources,” the report said. The access systems at every school could already generate reports showing inactive or duplicate devices.
The follow-through problem
The batch also includes a follow-up review (2026-MS-3) that puts the Town Line and Le Roy reports in context. New York has 899 fire districts, which spend about $1 billion a year, according to the report. Of 104 fire district audits the comptroller issued from January 2020 through July 2025, staff revisited 20.
Those 20 audits contained 163 recommendations. Officials had fully implemented 42 (26%), partially implemented 46 (28%) and not implemented 75 (46%). Together, 121 recommendations, or 74%, were not fully carried out. The most common gaps involved treasurers’ records, claims audits, annual financial reports and the required annual audit of the treasurer’s books.
“Until the remaining recommendations are fully implemented, weaknesses will continue to exist that may limit transparency and accountability,” the report said. The comptroller’s office described the unfinished work as leaving “operations and taxpayer resources vulnerable to inefficiencies and fraud.”
What happens next
State law requires the Le Roy Fire District and the three school districts to file corrective action plans with the comptroller within 90 days. The school plans must be posted on each district’s website. Town Line’s board is also directed to file a plan within 90 days and is encouraged to make it public.
The audits carry recommendations, not penalties. Follow-through depends largely on local boards, taxpayers in the Town Line coverage area, Le Roy Fire District voters, who elect the commissioners, and school board members in Batavia, Holley and North Collins. The follow-up review is a reminder that a corrective action plan on paper does not guarantee anything changes.
Residents can request the corrective action plans once they are filed. The audits list the comptroller’s Buffalo regional office, (716) 847-3647, as the local contact. The officials’ responses quoted here come from the letters published with each audit. The Buffalo Chronicle will update this story with any further comment.
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