Senator Kemp Hannon recently joined Governor George Pataki as the governor signed into law legislation that will strengthen oversight and increase accountability of school district finances, while protecting property taxpayers from fraud and abuse.

"This School Accountability law will provide our schools with stronger controls, better financial oversight training and improved integrity. The small percentage of Long Island school districts that have had scandals related to the misappropriation of funds is too many," he said.

The School Fiscal Accountability legislation includes two separate bills. The first bill requires that school board members receive six hours of financial oversight training, while establishing an internal audit mechanism within each school district. The new law also mandates a competitive Request for Proposal process for selecting independent auditors every five years. These external audits would conduct independent audits annually. The bill also requires school boards to create audit committees to work with the auditors and school boards throughout the audit process and to develop a public formal response for the school board to issues raised in the audit.

The second bill requires that all school districts, boards of cooperative educational services (BOCES) and charter schools be audited by the state comptroller at least once prior to 2010. Subsequent state audits would be determined according to risk assessment established by the comptroller. The comptroller would report his findings to the governor and legislature in December of each year.

Hannon said the new legislation also makes $2.9 million in funding available to conduct the various audits, enabling the Office of the State Comptroller to examine financial documents and records, assess the current financial practices of schools to ensure they are consistent with established standards and determine that school districts have in place adequate protections against fraud, theft or professional misconduct.