Two "Material Weaknesses" in 2004-2005 Accounting Practices

... which brings me to the second half of the story based on today's New Haven Register article entitled "W. Haven considers 3 options on deficit".

First, an aside... are we too poor to even merit spelling out West Haven? It's not exactly a space saver to go from West Haven to W. Haven... but I digress...

When the city auditors, Levitsky & Berney, re-audited the 2004-5 fiscal year, they included a supplemental report in which they said: "Two conditions were considered material weaknesses and were related to the misclassification of revenues and project overexpenditures of authorization amounts."

So why didn't they find it the first time? Former Mayor Borer would like to know, too.

The two weaknesses were:

1. 13 out of 145 capital projects reviewed for fiscal 2004-05 exceeded amounts authorized by the City Council because "internal controls are not in place."
2. The second weakness is identified as the city’s misclassification of revenues for school construction projects into the general fund instead of the capital account, creating a false general fund figure.

The reworked audit also showed almost half a million in overexpenditures in the school projects at West Haven High School and Thompson Elementary school... ugh.