Albany County records faulted
Audit: Officials skipped anti-harassment classes
ALBANY — A state comptroller’s audit found that Albany County failed to maintain reliable records on which county employees and elected officials completed their annual sexual harassment prevention training and that at least 30 people, including five elected officials, did not take the course.
The audit by Comptroller Thomas Dinapoli’s office was released earlier this month. The auditors looked at the county’s records for the period of August 2021 until August 2022.
The comptroller’s auditors examined the records for 315 people – 267 employees and all 48 elected officials. The auditors said they could not reliably verify that 308 of those 315 people completed the sexual harassment prevention training. The auditors said records for 235 employees and 43 elected officials were considered unreliable and another 25 employees and five elected officials did not take the training.
The state mandates that all employees take the prevention training. Local elected officials are not required to take the training, but the state encourages it, the auditors noted.
The questionable completion records appear to be focused largely on individuals who took the training through an online module.
The county allows employees and elected officials three different methods to complete the training, including a state training model, an online third-party vendor presentation given to groups of employees or an individual online training module.
Of the 315 people selected for the audit, the state said that 278 of them used the individual online module, including all 43 elected officials who took the training.
The comptroller’s auditors discovered that records for the individual online module could be changed to mark employees and elected officials as having completed the training without any way to track what changes were made, who made them or provide the reasons for the changes.
Other records discovered in the audit show that the changes likely allowed some employees to skip the training but claim they had taken it. The reported completion time for five employees in the audit was less than 20 seconds. The county’s
system also deleted the training records if an employee left the county’s service, creating other records retention issues, the auditors said.
The auditors also noted the county did not have a centralized tracking of the training to monitor completion.
In a written response, the county took issue with the audit’s focus on the individual online training group, arguing that it did not provide a true representation of those who took the training.
“We feel strongly that your sampling methodology is fundamentally flawed, which resulted in the misrepresentation of the actual training that occurred, thereby giving the appearance of 98 percent non-compliance,” Jennifer Clement, the county’s commissioner of human resources, responded in the letter.
The county explained that of the 30
people in the system who auditors said did not take the training, 21 were new hires. One employee was on leave and three other employees did not show up to their training.
Another five were elected officials, including one county legislator and all four county coroners. The county said those five did not have county email addresses and were not provided the online training module.
In her response to the comptroller, Clement also rejected the assertion that the online training records were unreliable over concerns the records could’ve been changed. Clement said that only four high-ranking county officials had the power to make edits and that they were allowed under limited circumstances.
Clement said that by the time the audit had finished, the county had put written procedures in place for any mandatory edits to the system, including requiring them to be verified by two people.
Clement’s response did not include
an explanation as to how some of the employees who took the online training were able to do so in less than 20 seconds, as the county’s records showed.
The comptroller’s office made recommendations, including establishing procedures to ensure the training records are complete, accurate and reliable. The county legislature has the responsibility of initiating a corrective action plan, the auditors said.
The comptroller’s office also found:
In the city of Glens Falls, of the 30 tested, two employees and all seven elected officials did not complete training.
In the village of Lake Placid, of the 20 tested, one police department employee and two trustees did not complete training.
In the town of Hyde Park, of the 20 tested, one employee and six elected officials did not complete training. The town also excluded 47 seasonal employees.