Audit Report on the Manhattan Borough President’s Office’s Cash Controls over Transactions from the Topographical Bureau

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Borough Presidents are the executive officials of each of New York City’s five boroughs and are elected to terms of four years. The City Charter grants each Borough President the power to maintain a topographical bureau, recommend capital projects, establish and maintain a budget office, consult with the Mayor on the executive expense budget and the executive capital budget, and submit proposed appropriation and other budget recommendations to the Mayor and the City Council.

The Manhattan Borough President’s Office’s (MBPO’s) Topographical Bureau is responsible for maintaining the Manhattan Borough Map and furnishing copies of the map and related data to City agencies and the general public. The Topographical Bureau charges fees, ranging from $250 to $18,000, for services such as the preparation and review of alteration maps, address assignments, address verifications, and vanity addresses. In the Fiscal Year 2017 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (Annual Report) of the Comptroller, the MBPO reported minor sales of $185,900.^[1]

The audit determined whether the MBPO is complying with cash control procedures as set forth in the Comptroller’s Directive #11, Cash Accountability and Control.

Audit Findings and Conclusions

Our audit found that the MBPO complied with certain cash control procedures set forth in Comptroller’s Directive #11 in that it adequately segregated cash handling duties, issued sequentially numbered receipts to customers, deposited fees in the City’s Treasury account, and secured fees awaiting deposit in a safe overnight. Additionally, as recommended by Comptroller’s Directive #11, the MBPO accepts only checks and money orders as payment. However, the MBPO did not deposit fees on a daily basis and did not secure fees collected throughout the day in a safe as required by Comptroller’s Directive #11. These control weaknesses increased the risk that the fees collected by the MBPO could be misappropriated or lost.

Audit Recommendations

To address these issues, we recommend that the MBPO:

• Supervise its staff to ensure that they deposit fees on a daily basis in accordance with Comptroller’s Directive #11 and internal policies and procedures.
• Supervise its staff to ensure fees collected throughout the day are stored in a safe in accordance with Comptroller’s Directive #11.

Agency Response

In its response, the MBPO generally agreed with the audit’s two recommendations and stated that

• [o]ur office is committed to full compliance with the Comptroller’s Directive 11 and wants to take every step to do so. . . . Again, as you know, our agency has a relatively small staff, and many of us perform multiple tasks. We are committed to making every effort to deposit payments daily. However, this may not always be possible. And in that event we will make sure that all delays in deposits are no more than a day or two, and that all undeposited funds are secured properly.

With regard to daily deposits, Comptroller’s Directive #11 states that the “[a]ccumulation of in-office cash receipts is not acceptable and all funds received must be deposited in the bank on at least a daily basis, except under extraordinary circumstances.” As noted in the report, the MBPO has the ability to remotely deposit checks from its office, and that is the method by which it routinely deposits them, which should minimize the staff time needed to comply with the one-day deposit rule. Therefore, we continue to recommend that the MBPO supervise its staff to ensure that they deposit fees on a daily basis.

[1] The fees collected by the MBPO Topographical Bureau are reported as “minor sales” in the Comptroller’s 2017 Annual Report.