Center Moriches Union Free School District Called Out in State Audit

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli issued a tough report to Center Moriches Union Free School District regarding the District’s tracking of taxpayer funds.

The District was found to not be monitoring employee time sheets putting more than $100,000 in payments into question.

Particularly troubling is that the audit found that the school district approved time sheets for:

• Overlapping game schedules which would require attending two games at the same time in different locations.
• No games scheduled on the date when compensation was requested.
• No home game scheduled on the date when compensation was requested.
• Submitting time sheets for payments for multiple tournaments on the same date and location.

One employee was paid approximately $37,153 for 675 hours of tutoring services that were provided during their regularly assigned work schedule.

Comptroller findings include that “officials did not make accurate, approved and supported payroll payments to employees for tutoring, covering classes, chaperoning and sports scorekeeping.”

Further, ”time sheets for 13 employees with 1,096 tutoring hours and 724 chaperone and sports scorekeeping events were not adequately supported to ensure payments totaling $100,103 were accurately paid.”

“We questioned the reasonableness of payments for 258 chaperoning and sports scorekeeping events totaling $14,190 due to various discrepancies with game schedules. For example, time sheets were submitted with overlapping game times and for dates when there were no games scheduled,” said the Comptroller report. 

Surprisingly in 2025, District officials did not have an adopted, written payroll policy or set of procedures “to convey expectations and processes to be followed for ensuring payroll payments to employees for miscellaneous activities were accurate, approved and supported.”

District officials agreed with Comptroller’s recommendations and have initiated or indicated they will initiate corrective action to be better stewards of the taxpayer funds.

The District will:

• Establish and adopt comprehensive written payroll processing policies and procedures for miscellaneous activities.
• Provide supervisors with training to ensure time sheets are only approved if they are adequately supported.