City Officials Question Southeast Queens Business Group's Spending Practices

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City Officials,Southeast Queens,Business Group

City officials are raising concerns about the spending practices of a southeast Queens business group, GatewayJFK, after an auditor's report revealed questionable expenses and weak financial controls. The nonprofit organization, which receives city grants and collects fees from local businesses, spent $100,000 on events with no apparent benefit to the neighborhood and paid excessive amounts for a website. The organization also withdrew $450,000 from its reserves for unclear expenditures.

City officials are questioning a southeast Queens business group after an auditor’s report found the city-funded nonprofit spent $100,000 on events with no apparent benefit to the neighborhood, paid tens of thousands of dollars for a website and exercised “weak to nonexistent” controls over its finances.

“The audit came back essentially stating that the executive director, who was operating on an interim basis, had performed rather poorly and instead had operated so egregiously that they endangered the finances of the organization,” Leopold-Hooke said in the meeting, according to a recording. “Unfortunately, the board proved to be absent in terms of performing its duties.”

Former Interim Executive Director Barbara Cohen, who led the organization during the period reviewed in the audit and participated in the group’s initial formation, sharply disputed the findings and characterizations. “It is not the auditor’s place to comment as to whether a programming expense ‘benefits the district,’ she added in an email. “The Board, working with the expertise, and to some degree , determines the needs the District and what activities are required and how they are implemented.”

 

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