Saugus audit results labeled ‘tragic for taxpayers’

SAUGUS – Town Meeting member Peter Manoogian said taxpayers in town are being “raped,” after the Board of Selectmen released a lengthy audit report detailing numerous violations of finance laws in the town?s sewer and water accounts.?This is tragic,” said Manoogian. “It?s tragic for the community, it?s tragic for the taxpayers. There is a willful, blatant disregard for municipal finance laws. What?s sad here is that the people that are best positioned to look into this did nothing, saw nothing and wouldn?t look. And I?m talking about the Finance Committee. These people have to look in the mirror and say, ?We enabled this.?”Click to view a PDF of the audit reviewThe audit details $1.4 million in general fund-related payroll and expenses being charged to water and sewer accounts, which the audit says is a violation of municipal finance laws. Some of these expenses include employees of the highway, forestry and cemetery department being paid out of the water and sewer accounts, hundreds of thousands of dollars in vendor expenses not properly bid and payroll stipends improperly paid to employees.?Our findings lead us to believe that there was a systematic, knowledgeable and intentional violation of finance laws that led to misleading and fraudulent accounting of the actual nature of the financial transactions for the years under review,” read the report from Powers and Sullivan.Town Meeting voted 25-17 last June to increase water rates by 8.6 percent. Former Town Meeting member Robert Cox spoke out against the increase and asked whether that was a realistic cost or an artificial inflation. Manoogian voted against the increase.?An 8.6 percent increase that provided jobs and other things outside of water and sewer,” said Manoogian.At the time, former Town Manager Andrew Bisignani, who is now Town Administrator in Nahant, said the water account was not padded. In a phone interview Wednesday, Bisignani maintained this, and said there was never any “willful intent” to mislead or violate municipal finance laws.?Half of what has gone on here I?m not really even familiar with,” said Bisignani. “The Superintendent of Public Works has been there for 40 years. He allocates his resources as he sees fit.”Bisignani declined to comment further.Department of Public Works Director Joe Attubato could not be reached for comment.According to the audit, Town Accountant Joan Regan and “several other employees” approached temporary Town Manager John Vasapolli with evidence and concerns of specific violations that had been occurring for “several years.”?We were informed numerous times by these employees that they knew processing these transactions were clear violations of law, but they stated they only did so under the specific instruction of the former Town Manager,” said the report.Town Moderator Bob Long said he was shocked to hear about the audit findings.?I?ve never heard of anything on a local level as blatant as this appears to be,” said Long. “I?m not sure where the system is so vulnerable that this could have happened unless people masterfully manipulated the current system to make it impossible to detect.”Long went on to say that the Finance Committee is a “recommending body,” not an “audit agency.”Michael Serino, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, said he was “disgusted” by the findings, but declined to comment on specifics until the board meets with the Finance Committee and the auditors next week.?Selectmen, Finance Committee, Town Meeting, we were all lied to,” said Serino.The board will review the audit with the Finance Committee on Wednesday at 7 p.m.Matt Tempesta can be reached at [email protected].