Clean ‘house,’ Cuomo is told

ALBANY — State Controller Thomas DiNapoli is knocking the Cuomo administration for a lack of sufficient monitoring of nonprofit organizations that provide housing for the mentally ill.

Three audits to be released Monday found a number of health and safety violations that were allowed to go uncorrected, as well as questionable expenses providers submitted to the state for everything from holiday parties with alcohol to an expensive conference at a swanky Lake Georgearea hotel that included a spa treatment.

“The Office of Mental Health can do more to monitor and safeguard money that’s earmarked to assist New Yorkers with mental illness,” DiNapoli (photo) said.

By far the worst findings involved the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, which offers housing and services to as many as 725 mentally ill clients in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan.

An audit of the organization’s five-year state contract, which ended in 2014, found health and safety issues at the apartments of 14 clients DiNapoli’s staff visited. Among them was a bedbug infestation in one apartment; badly damaged walls and ceilings in four units; one that had such a strong cat urine odor that a hospital mobile crisis unit worker declined to enter it, and two that lacked smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

DiNapoli’s auditors also found Postgraduate Center billed the state nearly $700,000 in unsupported or inappropriate expenses, including $8,555 for staff parties that included the purchase of alcoholic beverages. Nearly $9,000 was billed for movie tickets, gift cards and food and beverages for clients, but there was no documentation supporting the expenses, the audit said.

The center also spent nearly $458,000 in surplus funds on a profit-sharing program that paid out $50,000 to its executive staff and a more modest $1,092 for lowerpaid employees, even though its contract did not allow for such a program and required surpluses to be returned to the state, the audit said.

A center spokesman did not return a request for comment.

State Office of Mental Health spokeswoman Jessica Riley accused DiNapoli’s office of an unconstitutional overreach of its powers.