Politics & Government

Show Me The Money! New London Has Trouble Tracking Revenue

An operational audit of the Finance Department suggests that a lack of manpower is making it difficult to get information about revenues to key decision-makers in a timely manner.

Most people are aware at this point that the City of New London still hasn't approved a budget. But did you know that the city itself isn't always aware of how much money it has coming in? 

That bombshell was dropped yesterday, when the New London City Council's Finance Committee got its first look at the draft of the Finance Department Operational Audit. 

"A lot of information needs to make its way to Finance which isn't," said Ron Nossek, of Cohn and Reznick accounting firm in New London. "There's an absolute lack of information flow when grant money is handled by another department. There's a lack of information on where it even is, where it belongs, and that's what needs to get fixed and get fixed real quick."

The problem is particularly acute with state or federal grant money that is coming to different departments, such as the Board of Education. In an effort to be more efficient, the state and federal government frequently use electronic banking to automatically deposit grant money into city accounts. 
But, Nossek said, because of a lack of manpower in the finance department, by the time anyone sees the accounts, it's hard to tell where that money came from and where it's supposed to go. 

Currently, there are just two people responsible for tracking the money that comes into city coffers—the Director of Finance and the Controller. That creates a "bottleneck," Nossek said. 

New London Finance Director Jeff Smith is inclined to agree. About 10 years ago, the finance department—which is made up of IT, revenue collection, the assessors office, and accounting/bookkeeping—had a staff of 26, Smith said. Today, it's down to just 16 and the bulk of the people who left were on the accounting side.

"What's happened is we've lost a lot of horsepower," said Smith. "What we've lost is a lot of continuity and institutional knowledge." 

Nossek also noted that the position of deputy finance director remained vacant when the person who held that post left about five years ago. He suggested that the city hire someone to fill that spot at the very least to take the pressure off. 

"It's been going on for a long time and it's difficult to make solid decisions when you don't have the complete picture to look at," Nossek said. "The information is there. It just needs to be forwarded to finance. You're not getting accurate information in a timely manner." 

Speaking of timely matters, the Finance Committee also set its first budget hearing for September 3 at 5 p.m. City Council President and Chairman Michael Passero said he would propose that the Council consider hiring a financial consultant to help with the budget process.  



 


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