An independent accounting firm found inaccuracies with fiscal and management records under the former Albany County Airport Authority head who was fired last year.
This week the Authority released the report, prepared by Western New York-based public accounting firm EFPR Group. The firm's scan of the timeframe from January 1st, 2022 through December 31st, 2024, found various discrepancies and procurement irregularities, including over a million dollars in unapproved airline incentives. EFPR's Tom Smith said “There was an incentive program that covered ’21, ’22 as well as another one that covered 2023 and 2024. We could not find board approval over those incentive programs. Across all three years, the total incentives paid out to the different airlines told approximately $1.5 million. So you can see there's pretty significant incentives being paid out to the individual airlines, and we did not see any board approval of those incentive programs."
Calderone was fired in August 2024 before his five-year contract that had been slated to run until December 1st expired. At the time, Albany County Executive Dan McCoy was reportedly angling for the job.
Smith pointed out beyond those payouts there had been other purchases green-lighted by the ousted Calderone that would also have required board approval.
"Payments to Dust Busters Cleaning, Cristo Demolition and Flooring Environment Corporation, we made payments over $50,000 to each of them, and we could not know a board approval for any of those," said Smith. "And then the second sub bullet point, there is payments to A-J Sprinkler that originally were below $50,000 but there was a change order. More work had to go into it. Now that payment eventually got over the $50,000 threshold, but we did not note any board approval subsequent to that."
Smith says the report also found inaccuracies in certain time and attendance records for five airport employees, who were able to game the time clock system by leaving work early and having someone else at the job log them out hours later.
“And what we want to do is have some type of reminder go out to employees that using the manual log in and out is a last resort," said Smith. "Use it sparingly. You legitimately forgot about it. Maybe a monthly email, weekly email, and I think with that recommendation, we can at least see if someone is abusing the manual log in and out option. So this set of it being three years later, we're seeing who was doing this very often, maybe now we can actually catch it much earlier and essentially eliminate it.”
Smith notes timekeeping records only remain in the software system for 30 days.
The report recommends airport management monthly download those records to create a historical log.
Calderone could not be reached for comment. His attorney John Liguori referred WAMC to a statement he gave local print media which essentially says the board is using the report to justify its decision to let Calderone go.
