BUFFALO, N.Y. — On Thursday we heard directly from Erie County Clerk Mickey Kearns after a county comptroller's audit showed missing money and financial mismanagement in his office.
Both Kearns and County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick have called for the Erie County Sheriff's Office and the District Attorney to now investigate as well.
That lengthy audit, which covered two months in 2022, did raise many questions over the internal financial controls and accounting for the county clerk's office which handles county government business transactions for the public ranging from mortgages to pistol permit applications to other government fees.
It showed initially that over $90,000 appears to be missing and unaccounted for. But as the comptroller told us that since there had been no clerk's office audit since 2015, it could be much, much more than that.
Kearns at first claimed this was a positive move to correct any problems, but we had this exchange in a Thursday afternoon interview.
Reporter: The comptroller's office says your office was not open entirely to them when they were trying to conduct the audit.
Kearns: You know I do believe, and when we were talking to them, the comptroller also said I've been very cooperative.
Reporter: He did. But he said initially when they were trying to do these audits this audit that your office was not giving them materials they needed to see.
Kearns: That's not true from the standpoint of ... as I said Ron it's a very complicated office.
Reporter: Well, what's not true? He said it. Are you saying he is incorrect or misspoke ?
Kearns: No. What I'm saying is that we have a very complicated system, and they were asking for reports that many of the staff members didn't know how to print those reports out, so we were working with them. We just had a meeting on Wednesday where there's more clarity.
Kearns added: And remember we just can't stop. We have limited staffing. We just can't stop servicing the public. It's the largest and busiest front-facing office in county government."
Reporter: Isn't an investigation going to pull people away from their duties, and should that have been done from the start?
Kearns: So here's what we're doing. When you do an audit at the beginning, of course, everyone gets audited; big business, government gets audits, it's really important.
Reporter: But this is taxpayer money we're talking about.
Kearns: Exactly, and I agree, and we take it quite seriously.
We also asked Kearns about that specific investigation and what the comptroller said.
"I asked him. I said, 'Do you think that this could be simple bookkeeping errors, or that there could be something else seriously going wrong here?' And his answer was, 'Well, I'm concerned because that's why we called the sheriff in, that it could be something much more serious.' "
Kearns: And it could be serious, and I won't sugarcoat it. They're going to need the autonomy to come in here, search the records, talk to employees, and do what they're supposed to do. And it's not only about getting that person. Hopefully the district attorney is going to want to have evidence so they can prosecute that person."
Kearns also pointed out: "I've assigned one of my top people, that is going to be their charge. They're going to be responsible for that. We've taken other people to put them on this. I mean, we have to get this — obviously, as you said Ron — monies, discrepancies, we have to get this right for the public."
Then he said, "We've met with the legislature today to ask for additional staffing, accountants. I'm going to take every single recommendation that, I think, what the legislature thinks, what the comptroller thinks can benefit this office and make it stronger."
Kearns says he has 60 days to issue his formal response to the audit, even to the claim in the comptroller audit that he unlawfully waived pistol permit application fees.
In the meantime, the State Comptroller's office is still deciding if it will get involved. So far no clerk's office staffers have been fired or suspended, but some procedures have been changed.