Audit Report on the Department of Transportation’s Controls Over Payments to Consultants

The audit determined whether the Department of Transportation (DOT) had reasonable controls in place to ensure that payments for consultants’ time were adequately supported. In Fiscal Years 2010 and 2011, DOT registered 26 consultant contracts totaling $105,208,529 with the New York City Comptroller’s Office¹. During the period from July 1, 2009, through June 30, 2011, DOT made 80 payments totaling $7,503,562 on eight of these contracts.

Audit Findings and Conclusion

DOT had reasonable controls in place to ensure that payments for consultants’ time were adequately supported with the exception regarding payments made to one of the sampled consultants. The audit determined that additional controls should be implemented to provide additional assurance that the hours billed by consultants (specifically those working in the City and surrounding areas) were the actual hours worked. In addition, we identified discrepancies between the in and out times on consultant timesheets and E-ZPass statements for one of the contracts.

Audit Recommendations

Based on our findings, we made six recommendations, including that DOT should:

• Ensure that consultants submit all supporting documentation required by their contracts, including daily field inspection reports, and request copies of daily logs and daily trip logs to substantiate the hours worked and billed.
• Review consultant contracts where E-ZPass charges are reimbursed to determine the toll crossing times for days worked and to ensure that E-ZPass charges and work hours are not billed for days or hours not worked by the consultant.
• Compare the timesheets and E-ZPass statements cited in the report and determine whether money should be recouped.

Agency Response

In its response, DOT generally agreed with the intent of the audit recommendations. Nevertheless, DOT appears to take issue with three recommendations pertaining to reviewing E-ZPass usage to help ensure that contractor billings are accurate. Unfortunately, some of the statements made by DOT are contradictory and misleading. At various points throughout its response, DOT attempts to refute audit findings by offering arguments that it did not present to us when we discussed these findings with them during the course of the audit and at the exit conference. In some cases, DOT contradicts positions that it submitted to us previously or that are within its own response. Consequently, we find the arguments now being presented by DOT in its response as questionable and, without any credible evidence to support them, see no reason to alter our findings.

The full text of DOT’s response is included as an addendum to the report.