Audit Report on the Bronx County District Attorney’s Office’s Controls Over Personal Services Expenditures

Executive Summary

New York City’s five District Attorneys (DAs), including the Bronx County DA, are public officers elected to terms of four years who are responsible for investigating and prosecuting crimes, assisting victims, and implementing crime prevention strategies in their respective boroughs. The Bronx County District Attorney’s Office (BCDA) is primarily City-funded. The office’s budget is also supplemented with the proceeds of asset forfeitures provided to the BCDA.^[1]

During our audit scope period, Fiscal Years 2019 and 2020, the BCDA employed or administered the City-funded compensation for 1,554 individuals, consisting of 644 legal staff members and 910 support staff members, mostly unionized members, and included 12 rackets investigators who had previously retired from law enforcement agencies within New York State.

The objective of this audit was to determine whether the BCDA maintained adequate fiscal controls over its Personal Services (PS) expenditures.

Audit Findings and Conclusion

We found that the BCDA did not maintain adequate controls over its PS expenditures to ensure that the compensation paid to its employees was appropriate, adequately supported, and properly approved. Specifically, the BCDA did not comply with Comptroller’s Directive #13, Payroll Procedures, regarding the maintenance of payroll records for Miscellaneous Pay Adjustments and the contents of employee personnel files. In addition, the BCDA did not fully comply with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services’ (DCAS’) requirements for conducting performance evaluations and could not provide performance evaluations for 21 of the sampled 41 employees (51 percent). Therefore, there was not adequate documentation to enable a determination of whether the $199,710 in bonuses paid to these 21 employees was merited and properly calculated according to the BCDA’s procedures.

Additionally, we found deficiencies with the BCDA’s approval of 15,547 overtime requests (44 percent). Specifically, we found inappropriate cash payments for voluntary overtime worked, improper justifications or no documented justifications at all for some overtime requests,  and the approval of overtime requests for periods of less than 15 minutes.  As a result, the BCDA may have improperly paid as much as $906,595 in cash overtime and improperly awarded an additional 5,987 hours of compensatory time to its employees.

Further, the BCDA did not provide an approved waiver for one employee it obtained or should have obtained from DCAS pursuant to Section 211 of the New York State Retirement and Social Security Law. Therefore, we could not determine whether this employee was granted a waiver. Moreover, the BCDA did not provide copies of any documentation that it submitted to DCAS to support its Section 211 waiver requests.

Finally, we found control weaknesses with the BCDA’s calculation of steno pay. Specifically, we could not reliably determine whether the total number of pages transcribed by stenographers and used to calculate their steno pay was correct. We also found inadequate segregation of duties within the BCDA’s Payroll unit regarding the approval of steno pay and the entering of information into Payroll Interface (PI).

Audit Recommendations

To address the issues raised by this audit, we make 13 recommendations, including that the BCDA should:

• Maintain complete employee personnel records that include, at minimum, the information mandated by Comptroller’s Directive #13;
• Conduct and maintain performance evaluations for all sub-managerial employees on an annual basis as required;
• Maintain complete payroll records that include Miscellaneous Pay Adjustments made to employees;
• Ensure that cash overtime is not paid to employees who work overtime on a voluntary basis in accordance with established procedures;
• Ensure that complete, documented, and appropriate justifications, including the name of the supervisor, are included with overtime requests prior to approving the requests;
• Ensure that stenographers correctly record their completed page counts in accordance with the dates they certify as having completed the associated transcripts; and
• Comply with the requirements of Comptroller’s Directive #13 regarding the proper segregation of duties of payroll functions.

Agency Response

In its response provided on December 14, 2021, the BCDA stated that it “accepts the findings and has already taken steps to implement corrective actions based on the recommendations.”

[1] Under state and federal law, assets that have been used for or derived from criminal activities can be seized and forfeited as part of an effort to disrupt those criminal activities, punish criminals, and return assets to the victims of these crimes. Assets that can be liquidated are sold by the U.S. Marshals, with the net proceeds (after victims are compensated) shared with the law enforcement entities that contributed to the seizure of the funds.