reporter David McKay Wilson<\/a>, who first reported the findings.<\/p>\nGreenburgh Supervisor Paul Feiner said a recent financial audit was entirely politically motivated. Tania Savayan\/The Journal News, Tania Savayan\/The Journal News<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we don\u2019t have the money we need for the courthouse,\u201d Sheehan said. \u201cPaul is the town\u2019s chief financial officer, and the study showed that the town finances were extremely mismanaged at the expense of taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Feiner, now running for his 18th term, was first elected in 1991 to serve as supervisor in Greenburgh, one of the state\u2019s largest towns, encompassing six of Westchester County\u2019s most upscale villages.<\/p>\n
A quirky figure, the 70-year-old Feiner occasionally rides his bicycle to and from work, runs some of the town\u2019s business from his ailing mother\u2019s Scarsdale home and once started a town-sponsored dating site.<\/p>\n
According to the audit by EFPR Group, a prominent Rochester-based firm, he was asleep at the wheel.<\/p>\n
The firm, which reviewed town finances from 2020 to 2023, found that $29.4 million in property taxes remain unpaid as of 2024 \u2014 including millions in tax bills that date back almost 60 years.<\/p>\n
Greenburgh Town Board member Francis Sheehan chided the town\u2019s finances after a recent audit. Westchester County\/Youtube<\/p>\n
Among the findings is mismanagement of funds for the town\u2019s planned new courthouse and police station.<\/p>\n
The audit found that $39.5 million was set aside for the new criminal justice complex, but because the cash was thrown into the general fund in the budget instead of its own account, only $7.4 million has been used for the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy not actually restricting the funds in these years, the town was able to use them to plug other budget gaps year over year by reappropriating the funds intended for the courthouse,\u201d the audit said. \u201cBy way of reference, this project is still in the planning and design stages.\u201d<\/p>\n
Water bills also remain unpaid, with $3.1 million overdue by at least 60 days and as much as $125,000 in penalties for delinquent payments, which were suspended during the COVID pandemic, remain unpaid because the town never lifted the waiver after the pandemic, the audit said.<\/p>\n
The 15-page audit by upstate EFPR Group found shoddy financial practices in the town of Greenburgh. Town Board Greenburgh<\/p>\n
Other findings include shoddy record-keeping of contingency, or emergency, budget funds, former town employees that were never purged from payroll records, and 24 former staffers who are no longer on the job but still have access to accounting and operations programs.<\/p>\n
The audit does not suggest that ex-employees were still being paid \u2014 rather, it was cited as an example of poor record-keeping and management of town records. <\/p>\n
The town\u2019s financial policies were last revised in 2014, and its \u201cFinancial Handbook\u201d was last updated in 1999.<\/p>\n
In a response to The Post on Sunday, Feiner maintained there were no surprise findings in the audit, and said steps were already taken to address any issues, including the hiring of an outside firm to collect overdue taxes and three upcoming auctions to sell off foreclosed properties.<\/p>\n
He called it curious that the audit\u2019s review stopped at 2023 financial records.<\/p>\n
Greenburgh Supervisor Paul Feiner, 70, has been a quirky presence in local politics for 35 years. Tania Savayan\/The Journal News via Imagn Content Services, LLC<\/p>\n
Feiner also slammed the town board for a \u201cpoliticized\u201d financial review that he said is meant to damage his chances at another re-election bid this year \u2014 not to protect town tax dollars. Feiner is facing a primary challenge after the local Democratic Party endorsed another candidate, Barry McGoey, over the longtime town boss.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe town board\u2019s motivation, I believe, for the audit was simply to \u2018win points\u2019 in the Democratic primary, as not [new] information was learned,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important to understand that the current town bard has organized against my re-election by unanimously supporting a candidate chosen by the Democratic Party leadership, and my independence has always been difficult for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Feiner added that a recent outside auditor recently reviewed Greenburgh\u2019s finances and found them sound \u2014 noting that the town has an AAA bond rating, one of just a handful of other municipal governments in the region with that designation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A suburban town run by one of the Empire State\u2019s longest serving Democrats left millions in tax dollars…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":625299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,191621,31361,7033,5248,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,12894,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969,14549],"class_list":["post-625298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-audits","tag-budgets","tag-democrats","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-taxpayers","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-news","tag-usa","tag-westchester-county"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116155778630605221","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}