A suburban town run by one of the Empire State’s longest-serving Democrats left millions in tax dollars uncollected, including property taxes that had been due since 1967, a startling new study finds.
The city of Greenburgh, governed for 35 years by Democratic politician Paul Feiner, has $2.6 million in unpaid parking tickets dating back at least three years, still has former city workers on the payroll, and has used only a small portion of the money allocated for a new court. Accounting firm EFPR found the group.
“I find it unreasonable that city taxpayers are now being asked to pay for court costs that they have already paid for,” Francis Sheehan, the all-Democrat Greenburgh City Council member who commissioned the audit, told The Independent. Reporter David McKay Wilsonwho reported the results for the first time.
“Right now we don’t have the money we need for the courthouse,” Sheehan said. “Paul is the city’s CFO, and the study showed that the city’s finances were very poorly managed 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 cities, which includes six of Westchester County’s finest villages.
A quirky character, the 70-year-old Viner sometimes rides his bike to and from work, runs some city business from his ailing mother’s home in Scarsdale, and once started a city-sponsored dating site.
According to an audit conducted by EFPR Group, a prominent Rochester-based firm, he was asleep at the wheel.
The firm, which audited the city’s finances from 2020 to 2023, found that $29.4 million in property taxes remained unpaid as of 2024 — including millions in tax bills dating back nearly 60 years.
Among the results is mismanagement of funds allocated to the city’s planned new courthouse and police station.
The audit found that $39.5 million was allocated for the new criminal justice complex, but because cash was thrown into the general fund in the budget instead of its own account, only $7.4 million was used for the project.
“By not actually tying up funds in these years, the city was able to use them to fill other budget gaps year after year by reallocating courthouse funds,” the audit said. “For your information, this project is still in the planning and design stages.”
Water bills also remain unpaid, with $3.1 million delinquent by at least 60 days and up to $125,000 in penalties for late payments, which were suspended during the COVID pandemic, remaining unpaid because the city never lifted the waiver after the pandemic, the audit said.
Other findings include poor record keeping of contingency or emergency budget funds, former city employees who were never removed from payroll records, and 24 former employees who are no longer at their jobs but still have access to accounting and operations software.
The audit does not indicate that former employees are still being paid — rather, it was cited as an example of poor record-keeping and management of the city’s records.
The city’s financial policies were last revised in 2014, and the Fiscal Manual was last updated in 1999.
In response to The Post on Sunday, Feiner emphasized that there were no surprise findings in the audit and said steps had already been taken to address any issues, including hiring an outside company to collect delinquent taxes and three upcoming auctions to sell foreclosed properties.
He described it as strange that the audit review stopped at the 2023 financial records.
Feiner also criticized the City Council for a “politicized” financial audit that he said was intended to hurt his chances of trying for re-election again this year — not to protect city tax dollars. Feiner faces a primary challenge after the local Democratic Party endorsed another candidate, Barry McGoey, for longtime city mayor.
“I believe the City Council’s motivation for conducting the audit was simply to ‘gain points’ in the Democratic primary, not… [new] “The information has been obtained,” he said.
“It is important to understand that the current town poet has organized against my re-election by unanimously supporting a candidate chosen by the leadership of the Democratic Party, and my independence has always been difficult for them.”
Viner added that an outside auditor recently reviewed the City of Greenburgh’s finances and found them to be sound — noting that the city received a AAA bond rating, one of only a few other municipal governments in the area to hold that rating.