An audit performed by City Auditor Nader Maroun uncovered the waste earlier this year.
According to the audit, more than 20 percent (190 of 897) of the wireless devices that the city paid for during the 2021 Fiscal Year were never used.
The audit considered wireless devices to include cell phones, wireless internet air cards and global positioning system (GPS) tracking devices. It said the city was charged $292,647 over a six-year span for devices that were never used. Maroun said that most of the unused devices were cell phones.
“This isn’t complicated stuff,” Maroun said. “We’re not talking about putting a man on the moon. I think it epitomizes the situation down here. If you look at nearly every audit we’ve done, you’ll see a lack of internal controls.”
Frank Caliva, the city’s chief administrative officer, said the city has corrected the issue by hiring an outside contractor, Syracuse-based Wireless Business Group, to oversee its wireless devices.
He said Maroun’s audit correctly identified that oversight was not sufficient. He took issue with Maroun’s judgment that “there was a complete and total lack of oversight.”
“The auditor has his strong opinions,” Caliva said. “Was there sufficient oversight? No. Was there a complete lack or no oversight? Again, no.”
The amount of wasted taxpayer money increased for four consecutive years during a timeframe that ended in June 2021.
Caliva joined Mayor Ben Walsh’s staff in early 2019. Walsh took over the city government at the start of 2018.
The city spent more than $74,920 on unused devices during Fiscal Year 2021. That was a jump from $28,600 in 2016. The amount wasted on unused devices provided to city employees outside of the police and fire departments increased from $6,990 to $35,671 during that span.
Maroun’s audit said that unused devices that were paid for by the city included cell phones issued to former employees and employees who instead used personal phones, seasonal lines that could have been suspended and mobile hotspots that were not used.
Caliva placed some of the blame on the oversight system the current administration inherited, one he considered very labor intensive.
He said that the city’s finance and information technology departments, which were in charge of billing and cell phone distribution, have both struggled to maintain staff sizes. He said the staff the city has maintained needed to focus on more critical projects.
That combination, he said, led to the deficient oversight and the decision to off-load that work.
While Maroun also questioned the expense of using a contractor, Caliva said he believes it is the most efficient use of the city’s money. The city currently pays Wireless Business Group around $15,000 annually for oversight of its wireless device program.
In exchange, Caliva said, the contractor monitors the city’s account for unused lines, helps determine if employees are on the most current plans and determines whether employees can be combined more efficiently into a combined data pool rather than paying for individual accounts.
“We’ve had huge problems attracting folks to those positions,” Caliva said. “I’m not trying to minimize the impact of cell phones on our expenses but we are spending millions of dollars and hundreds of man hours on digital transformation and improvement of our financial systems. I am far more focused on using my internal resources on that transformation and allowing someone else to take care of cell phones.”
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