Just two years ago, a clerk in the Erie County Social Services Department was indicted for stealing more than $330,000 in bus passes intended for the poor.

County officials installed new safeguards. But county auditors recently found some of the most important safeguards were being ignored, and they feared large numbers of passes could be stolen again.

“In this case, they dropped the ball,” Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz said Monday about the Social Services Department.

When the thefts were revealed publicly in February 2006, Social Services Commissioner Michael Weiner said the county’s inventory of bus passes was no longer being handled by just one person.

Weiner did not return telephone messages Monday to comment on the audit, in which auditors said the separation of duties had remained inadequate.

However, Poloncarz and his chief auditor said Weiner had generally accepted their findings when shown a draft of the report. He is expected to respond in writing by mid-July.

Auditors found the Social Services staff failing to follow two key corrections that prior to 2006 would have made it more difficult for Senior Clerk Sandra Haslam Bonner to rip off the department:

• The comptroller’s office helped the staff to create a computerized spreadsheet to track the issuance of bus passes. The spreadsheet would name the recipients and could be used monthly, weekly or daily, if desired, to check the remaining supply of passes that should be on hand. Key staff used the spreadsheets for a time, but their replacements did not, auditors said.

• Comptroller’s officials wanted a clear separation of duties between the people who had access to the passes and those who kept the records. That safeguard, too, was not fully followed. Cashier’s office employees had custody of the inventory and controlled inventory records, allowing for manipulation, the report said.

Social Services had kept a list of clients eligible for bus passes. But 90 people on the list for March of this year did not collect their passes, and the Postal Service returned 34 due to wrong addresses.

Auditors found concerns at the 44 agencies that can distribute bus passes on the county’s behalf. The auditors visited 11 of the 44 and found four agencies did not require recipients to turn in one month’s bus pass before they receive the next month’s — a way to ensure the recipient has not sold a pass.

Four agencies did not check a recipient’s photo identification, a requirement for the “restricted” passes that are given to Medicaid recipients to help them get to medical appointments. Three agencies did not have separate personnel handling and recording issuance of passes, the same separation of duties lacking at County Hall.

The thefts of bus passes, which the government buys from the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, had gone on one to two years before being discovered around February 2006, when Bonner was vacationing in Las Vegas. She was indicted in May of that year.

Authorities said Bonner, with sole control over a store of monthly bus passes, was able to pilfer hundreds. While the passes are free to welfare recipients, the NFTA sells them for $56 to $66 depending on the travel zones a person wants covered. Bonner sold them through a cousin for $20 to $30 apiece.

The cousin, Lynette Edwards, pleaded guilty to a stolen- property charge, was placed on probation for three years and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.

Bonner pleaded guilty to second-degree grand larceny in December 2006 and was sentenced in March 2007 to up to six months in jail. She was 51 at the time and living on Wyoming Avenue.

mspina@buffnews.com

Copyright 2008 - The Buffalo News