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SUFFOLK COUNTY---A 218-page report by the special grand jury impaneled last September to view evidence of corruption and review spending practices in Suffolk County's 70 school districts has been released by Suffolk district attorney Thomas Spota.
Spota called the voluminous report "a roadmap for the elimination of the fraud, waste and mismanagement" found by the grand jury during its investigation.
The grand jury viewed nearly 500 evidentiary exhibits and listened to testimony from 138 witnesses during the probe. Spota said each district in the county would receive the report, as will the Governor and the leaders of the State Assembly and Senate.
The grand jury made four major findings in the report:
--A lack of oversight and internal controls by those charged with the responsibility to safeguard taxpayer's money;
--Large expenditures of public funds for compensation and fringe benefits to school administrators that are largely hidden from taxpayers and designed to be beyond taxpayer control;
--The public pension system for school district employees is being defrauded of millions of dollars in taxpayer monies; and
--The misuse of hundreds of thousands of dollars in educational grants.
"The grand jury was alarmed at the lack of public notification and knowledge about lucrative benefits packages" awarded to many school administrators, particularly "private retirement accounts" paid to the administrators "beyond their state pensions", Spota said.
"The Grand Jury found that taxpayers have no meaningful access to information about the largest school district expenditures - the salaries and enhanced benefits being paid to school district administrators," said Spota. "The way things are now, the average taxpayer to understand what's going on, would have to be fairly knowledgeable about life insurance products, including annuities and the like, if that average taxpayer could get his or her hands on the information to begin with," DA Spota noted. "Remember that this grand jury had subpoena power and a team of auditors combing through thousands of documents, interviewing school officials, all the while clarifying volumes of sophisticated financial data."
"The grand jury has found that there has to be a better way to make the average citizen aware of the salaries and perks paid to administrators financed with their tax dollars," said DA Spota.
State Senator Owen Johnson ((4th Senate District, Babylon), secured a $300,000 state grant for the district attorney's office to further the probe of corruption in school districts. "I applaud District Attorney Spota for this sweeping and thorough investigation," Sen. Johnson said, "and look forward to working with him to implement changes to state law that will protect taxpayers and ensure that every education dollar is spent wisely." 9-25-06
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© 2006 North
Country Gazette
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