Northport Audit Committee Vote Now in Doubt

Audit Committee member Larry Beck is calling for the committee to hold off on its recent recommendation of a new internal auditor for the Northport Board of Education's approval.

After swearing in new members Julia Binger and Tom Lavin on Aug. 1, the Audit Committee voted 6-1 to go into executive session to interview potential candidates for the role of internal auditor. The district’s contract with current auditor Sheehan & Company expired on July 1.

During executive session, four firms were interviewed: Sheehan & Company, Markum LLP, R&S Abrams, and Israeloff, Trattner & Co. Members voted 7-0 to recommend R&S Abrams to the Board for approval.Contacted on Friday, Assistant Superintendent for Business Kathleen Molander said that there were actually eight candidates who submitted RFPs (request for proposal).

The other four firms were Cerini & Associates, D’Arcangelo & Co., Nawrocki Smith LLP, and Toski, Schaefer and Co.According to Molander, Superintendent Marylou McDermott was directed by Board President Steven Waldenburg to review all proposals.

McDermott asked Molander to be part of the process, and together they chose the four candidates to be interviewed.Molander said they looked at each firm’s credentials, their accessibility to the district, and their record with other districts.

She also said that Board members knew there were eight candidates, and that all of the proposals were available for review.This came as news to Beck, who wanted to know why non-Board members were unaware of the eight proposals. He said that four to five days before the meeting, he received the proposals from the four firms, but without fees.

At the meeting, members received four new sets of proposals with fees included. He wants to know why those fees had been removed initially. Also troubling to Beck is the fact that the request for proposals was sent out without committee member input-- even though members had been assured in June that they would be part of the process.

As a result, Beck sent an email to the Committee on Friday evening withdrawing his vote for R&S Abrams until those other four proposals could be reviewed.

“Given the fact that I was denied knowledge of the existence of these additional four proposals I respectfully request that the AC defer its recommendation to appoint R&S Abrams until the AC interviews and evaluates the other four firms," Beck wrote in an email. "Accordingly, I retract my vote to recommend R&S Abrams as the internal auditing firm.”

This is not the first time Beck has been frustrated by an inability to get full information. On May 24 he had to FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) the district to get copies of invoices and correspondence from and to the District, the BOE and the Audit Committee Chair and Sheehan & Company for the month so he could prepare for a June 13 audit committee meeting.

That request cost him $73.25. As of June 21 he still hadn’t received the information, so he emailed District Clerk Beth Nystrom. Nystrom said attorneys were reviewing the documents before they released it to him. Beck had to point out that he was a member of the Audit Committee. A copy of his request is attached in PDF form to this article. 

“Management should have some input, but they should not be overseeing the process let alone controlling it and deciding what information the Audit Committee should have and what it shouldn't have,” Beck said. “The Audit Committee is supposed to advise the BOE on such matters, which is an impossible task when certain AC members are not well informed of all of the facts, especially material facts.”

Editor's Note: This article was changed to reflect corrected information. Julia Binger and Tom Lavin were sworn in as new audit committee members, not Thomas Lavin and Danielle Buell.