OBSERVER Staff Report

An audit by the state Comptroller’s Office found that dozens of Cattaraugus County employees and more than half of elected officials had not completed annual sexual harassment prevention training.

Results of the 11-page audit — from Oct. 1, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2021 — were released on Tuesday. In it, the state Comptroller’s Office said it questioned 150 individuals comprised of 125 selected county employees and all 25 elected officials. Results found that 29% of the employees and 18 elected officials did not complete the required sexual harassment prevention training.

“County officials generally agreed with our recommendation and have indicated they planned to initiate corrective action,” the report states.

New York state labor law requires employees to be provided sexual harassment prevention training on an annual basis.

Included in the audit is a response from John Searles, county administrator.

“Cattaraugus County does not tolerate sexual harassment and the county fully endorses and supports efforts to provide the sexual harassment training mandated by New York State,” Searles said.

In total, Cattaraugus County has 1,531 employees and elected officials.

Searles said he had “several comments” regarding the audit, most notably the time frames.

“In 2021, Cattaraugus County was still heavily in the midst of its response to COVID-19,” he said, later adding, “During the period you selected for this audit, locally, we were still scrambling for vaccine, tests, dealing with high levels of hospitalizations, and responding to the associated local needs. This was an all-out effort on the part of the county to address the pandemic needs of our population.”

Searles also noted that the county Legislature in 2021 opted not to re-appoint its human resources director responsible for administering the annual sexual harassment prevention training. The county also changed its online training platform.

In his response, Searles also questioned the state Comptroller’s Office questioning all elected officials as part of its audit and not a random sample of officials.

“This of course is particularly troublesome locally when the majority party locally is not the party in majority in Albany,” he said.

In a response to Searles’ comments, the Comptroller’s Office said its sampling methodology was discussed with the county administrator and the assistant county attorney who was “heavily involved” in the audit process and throughout testing.

“All 25 elected officials at the county during the audit period were included in our sample; we did not target any specific officials,” the office said. “Elected officials represented 17 percent of the total 150 individuals sampled.”