Officials in the New Hyde Park Fire District failed to properly authorize and approve nearly all overtime or doubletime hours paid out and did not review or approve 79 percent of timecards totaling more than $170,000 in gross pay, according to an 18-month audit by the state comptroller's office.
The report, released Thursday, states that supervisors also did not document their reasons for adjusting $4,451 worth of payroll hours, and that 91 percent of the overtime or doubletime hours that were paid out but not approved totaled $7,833.
The fire district had a $693,000 budget in 2017 for salaries among its 26 employees, according to audit data. Eight of those employees work at district headquarters on Jericho Turnpike.
“We reviewed seven months of timecards for those eight employees,” auditors wrote in their report. “We found that a direct supervisor did not review or approve 244 [out of 309] of the timecards, totaling $171,092 in gross salary payments.”