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20250819-093319-5b0-Town of Highland - Office of the Town Clerk Review Report.pdf

TOWN OF HIGHLAND, NY — The Highland Town Board released a finalized review of the town clerk’s office in its meeting on Tuesday, August 12. 

The report alleges significant lapses of procedure and protocol from the town clerk’s office, including a total of $5.4 million from a preliminary review released in May. The town clerk’s representative, attorney Mike McGuire, spoke following the report’s distribution, calling it a “witch hunt” and rejecting the allegations it makes. 

The current town clerk, Sue Hoffman, was placed under censure and had her town computer seized following a February 26 emergency meeting of the town board. The board had previously voted to pursue a forensic analysis of the town clerk’s office at its January meeting. 

The findings of the final report largely follow those from the preliminary report (See riverreporter.com/stories/highland-audit-finds-45m-in-unrecorded-tax-funds,199262 for more on the preliminary report.)

The “results” portion of the final report states, “Based on our assessment, it appears that the office of the town clerk is generally operating ineffectively, is not recording transactions into tracking software accurately or timely, is not depositing funds timely, is not performing reconciliations on pertinent bank accounts, and generally does not have adequate controls and processes in place around the areas included in the scope of this review.”

The review states that there were discrepancies between different types of reporting on cash receipts, with names and numbers inconsistent between different record-keeping systems sampled. 

“For the three-year period of 2022 through 2024, there was a total variance of just under $5.4 million between all deposits made into the clerk bank accounts versus transactions logged in the various systems,” reads the report. 

The review could not determine why these variances exist, it said, but it said such variances likely indicate that the town’s transaction records are incomplete. It recommended that the town undergo a process to rebuild its records. 

The review did not include any allegations money missing from the town’s accounts, and did not find any suspicious or unusal checks. 

According to the review, “When the variance between system records and deposits is this large, it is almost impossible to determine if there are missing deposits.”

The review also found a lack of timeliness in various aspects of the town clerk’s operations, including in making bank deposits, remitting monthly revenue to the town and other legal filings. 

Ramifications and responses

The town board voted to require a secondary signer for all town bank accounts and will be holding a meeting on September 2 to discuss its responses to the report. It will make any needed changes during its September 9 regular meeting, said supervisor John Pizzolato. 

During public comment, McGuire, the attorney, spoke on behalf of Hoffman, whom he called his client. 

“This board has taken on the personality of a vigilante, rogue mob by creating the illusion of public corruption in the office of the town clerk,” he said. 

McGuire claimed that the investigation had cost the town $54,000. He said that the deputy supervisor, Sonia Kidney, should recuse herself, because she is “inexorably conflicted in this matter.”

According to a list of filers from the Sullivan County Board of Elections, Kidney filed to be on the ballot for the 2025 election for the Highland Town Clerk position. 

McGuire said the report “weaponized town government against a public servant” and had found no evidence of wrongdoing—the “smoking gun” in the report was that some “philanthropist” had deposited excess money in the town’s accounts, he said. 

Writing to the River Reporter following the meeting, Pizzolato said, “I advise you to speak with extreme caution regarding the clerk’s censuring and her attorney’s efforts,” and stated that there would be “implications” for publishing a one-sided story, referencing an unrelated lawsuit involving a separate media organization.

Pizzolato claimed the situation with the town clerk “is going to be a statewide investigation very soon.”

Also following the meeting, McGuire spoke about the situation on a podcast he hosts with former chair of the Sullivan County Legislature, Rob Doherty. McGuire was county attorney while Doherty was in office, and lost the position following Doherty’s loss in the November 2023 election. 

Hoffman was appointed to the position of town clerk by former town supervisor Jeff Haas, who lost to Pizzolato in the 2023 election. 

Editor's note: The originally published version of this article referred to the report produced on the Highland town clerk's office as an audit. The report is not technically a financial audit, defined as a review sufficient to form an opinion on whether a set of financial statements are accurate. 

According to the report, the firm that conducted it was "not engaged to, and did not, conduct an audit, the objective of which would be the expression of an opinion on the financial operations, financial reporting or general policies and procedures in place surrounding the functions within the Town's operations. Accordingly, we did not express such an opinion." 

This article has been updated as of 9:15 a.m. on Wednesday, August 20 to correct this error. 

Additionally, one of the quotes used from the report contained a transcription error, and has been corrected.