A suburban town run by one of the Empire State’s longest serving Democrats left millions in tax dollars uncollected, including property taxes that were due as far back as 1967, a bombshell new audit found.
The town of Greenburgh, which has been governed by Dem politician Paul Feiner for 35 years, has $2.6 million in unpaid parking tickets dating back at least three years, still has former town workers on the payroll, and used only a fraction of money earmarked for a new courthouse, accounting firm EFPR Group found.
“I find it unconscionable that town taxpayers are now going to be asked to pay for a courthouse that they’ve already paid for,” Francis Sheehan, a member of the all-Democrat Greenburgh Town Board that commissioned the audit, told independent reporter David McKay Wilson, who first reported the findings.
“Now we don’t have the money we need for the courthouse,” Sheehan said. “Paul is the town’s chief financial officer, and the study showed that the town finances were extremely mismanaged at the expense of taxpayers.”
Feiner, now running for his 18th term, was first elected in 1991 to serve as supervisor in Greenburgh, one of the state’s largest towns, encompassing six of Westchester County’s most upscale villages.
A quirky figure, the 70-year-old Feiner occasionally rides his bicycle to and from work, runs some of the town’s business from his ailing mother’s Scarsdale home and once started a town-sponsored dating site.
According to the audit by EFPR Group, a prominent Rochester-based firm, he was asleep at the wheel.
The firm, which reviewed town finances from 2020 to 2023, found that $29.4 million in property taxes remain unpaid as of 2024 — including millions in tax bills that date back almost 60 years.
Among the findings is mismanagement of funds for the town’s planned new courthouse and police station.
The audit found that $39.5 million was set aside for the new criminal justice complex, but because the cash was thrown into the general fund in the budget instead of its own account, only $7.4 million has been used for the project.
“By not actually restricting the funds in these years, the town was able to use them to plug other budget gaps year over year by reappropriating the funds intended for the courthouse,” the audit said. “By way of reference, this project is still in the planning and design stages.”
Water bills also remain unpaid, with $3.1 million overdue by at least 60 days and as much as $125,000 in penalties for delinquent payments, which were suspended during the COVID pandemic, remain unpaid because the town never lifted the waiver after the pandemic, the audit said.
Other findings include shoddy record-keeping of contingency, or emergency, budget funds, former town employees that were never purged from payroll records, and 24 former staffers who are no longer on the job but still have access to accounting and operations programs.
The audit does not suggest that ex-employees were still being paid — rather, it was cited as an example of poor record-keeping and management of town records.
The town’s financial policies were last revised in 2014, and its “Financial Handbook” was last updated in 1999.
In a response to The Post on Sunday, Feiner maintained there were no surprise findings in the audit, and said steps were already taken to address any issues, including the hiring of an outside firm to collect overdue taxes and three upcoming auctions to sell off foreclosed properties.
He called it curious that the audit’s review stopped at 2023 financial records.
Feiner also slammed the town board for a “politicized” financial review that he said is meant to damage his chances at another re-election bid this year — not to protect town tax dollars. Feiner is facing a primary challenge after the local Democratic Party endorsed another candidate, Barry McGoey, over the longtime town boss.
“The town board’s motivation, I believe, for the audit was simply to ‘win points’ in the Democratic primary, as not [new] information was learned,” he said.
“It is important to understand that the current town bard has organized against my re-election by unanimously supporting a candidate chosen by the Democratic Party leadership, and my independence has always been difficult for them.”
Feiner added that a recent outside auditor recently reviewed Greenburgh’s finances and found them sound — noting that the town has an AAA bond rating, one of just a handful of other municipal governments in the region with that designation.
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