Audit Report on the Inventory Practices Over Major Office Equipment at the Office of the City Clerk and Clerk of the Council

Introduction

The City Clerk has a dual role, serving as both the Clerk of the City of New York and the Clerk of the Council. As the City Clerk, the Clerk attests to leases and deeds of City property, grants, agreements, bonds, tax notes, and other forms of obligations of the City.

Other duties of the City Clerk include maintaining two separate bureaus — the Lobbying Bureau and the Marriage Bureau. The Lobbying Bureau is responsible for the enforcement of the City’s Lobbying Law. The Marriage Bureau provides Marriage Licenses, Domestic Partnership registrations, and civil Marriage Ceremonies. As the Clerk of the City Council, the main function of the Clerk is to attest to all laws enacted by the City Council. The Clerk of the Council is also responsible for keeping the transcripts of the proceedings of the City Council.

During Fiscal Year 2011, Other Than Personal Service expenditures for the City Clerk’s Office amounted to $1,066,020.

Results

The City Clerk’s Office generally maintained complete and accurate inventory records for all major office equipment as required by the Department of Investigation’s (DOI) Standards for Inventory Control and Management. However, there is a lack of segregation of duties that may weaken the internal controls over safeguarding of equipment. Specifically, one person is responsible for purchasing, receiving, and maintaining inventory. Comptroller’s Directive #1 states that key duties and responsibilities need to be divided or segregated among different staff members to reduce the risk of error or fraud. We did not find any instances of missing or misplaced equipment. The City Clerk needs to segregate these responsibilities in order to minimize any potential risk of loss. We also found minor exceptions regarding maintenance of complete and accurate inventory lists.

Audit Recommendations

The audit made four recommendations, including that the City Clerk’s Office should ensure that:

1. The functions of making purchases, signing off on deliveries, and maintaining the inventory list are properly segregated.
2. Purchases only items that are needed for its operations.
3. Affixes sequentially numbered identification tags to all office equipment items.
4. Maintains complete and accurate inventory records.

In their response, the City Clerk’s Office officials agreed with the audit’s findings and recommendations, and stated that they “accept the recommendations of the audit and will implement the same.”