Feeling Powerless as Wilton Financial Concerns Mount, BOF Asks: What Can We Do?

The Wilton Board of Finance is charged with overseeing the Town’s finances. But what happens when its members identify financial concerns and struggle to get the complete information, response or corrective action they believe is necessary?

That question emerged repeatedly at the BOF’s Tuesday, Aug. 11 meeting, as members discussed outstanding work on the already-delayed Fiscal Year 2025 audit, the lack of regular financial reporting, unanswered requests to town officials and an unresolved legal disagreement over who has authority to approve transfers within the town budget.

Several times during Tuesday’s meeting, the discussion came back to a fundamental question: What authority does the BOF have to compel action?

The concerns are playing out on several fronts. Auditors are still waiting for outstanding items from the Town and Board of Education to complete the FY25 audit; BOF members say they still aren’t receiving the regular financial reporting they want from Town Hall; a requested tri-board meeting to establish financial reporting expectations has not been scheduled; and questions remain about FY25 expenditures and transfers that occurred without required BOS approval.

At the same time, BOF Chair Tim Birch is challenging town counsel’s opinion that the BOF does not have authority to approve transfers between town departments. Birch said his requests to discuss that disagreement with town counsel and the BOS have not resulted in a meeting.

Taken together, the issues left BOF members repeatedly asking Tuesday: What they can do when they identify financial concerns but lack the executive authority to address them directly?

Fiscal Year 2025 Audit Still Awaiting Items

Birch told the BOF that Wilton’s auditors expect to provide a draft of the FY25 audit by the end of August, and anticipate issuing the final report in early September following an internal quality review.

But auditors are still waiting for outstanding items from both the Town and the Board of Education.

When Birch asked what those items were, CFO Dawn Savo sent him the list only hours before Tuesday’s meeting, without any supporting information or explanation.

“It wasn’t short,” he said, describing it as a “fair list” crossing both the BOS and BOE.

While the list was not posted publicly, GOOD Morning Wilton obtained a copy of the document, which outlined several items including a note about a $900,000 variance that still needed to be explained.

The FY25 audit, which was due to the state by June 30, is already more than six weeks late. Birch also said the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management has been contacting the auditors monthly for status reports.

Ongoing audit problems were part of the reason the BOF created a Temporary Audit Remediation and Financial Reporting Subcommittee last month. On Tuesday, the BOF voted 4-1 to remove BOS members from the panel over concerns about maintaining independent oversight and conflict of interest.

But discussion also raised another question relevant to the BOF’s broader concerns: What happens if the subcommittee’s findings or recommendations are ignored?

“If they want to ignore it, then I guess they can ignore it,” BOF member Kari Roberts said. “That’s not something we can control if they ignore it or not.”

Financial Reports Still Lacking

The BOF also continues to seek more regular and complete financial reporting from Town Hall, including in-person attendance at BOF meeting by CFO Savo.

While Savo was not in attendance Tuesday, Birch said she had provided some financial materials and responses to BOF member questions, but “not probably as many as I would like.” He said several responses indicated she had not yet supplied information to the BOS and she’d give it to the BOF at the same time as the selectmen.

Later in the meeting, BOF member Kim Healy returned to the absence of regular financial reporting, stating, “So obviously we didn’t get any really today,” she said.

Healy said she has been examining financial reporting provided to boards of finance in nearby municipalities, including Darien and New Canaan, and is developing ideas for what regular reporting from the CFO in Wilton should look like.

In the past, the BOF had also discussed holding a tri-board meeting between the BOF, BOS and BOE before its September meeting to establish expectations and seek consistency in the financial reports provided by the Town and School District.

“I have not heard back about that,” Birch said.

Former BOF member Sandy Arkell, speaking during public comment at Tuesday’s meeting, said previous finance boards had more direct access to the CFO and received regular financial forecasts and reports.

“We used to get a regular monthly update of forecast where we thought we were going to be, and that’s a really important function,” Arkell said.

Arkell noted that Savo has been in the CFO position for about nine months and described her as capable and experienced.

“This should not be something that is foreign to her,” Arkell said of the financial management and remediation work facing the town.

The Town Charter gives the BOF access to Wilton’s financial information. Section C-29 states that the board “shall have access at all reasonable times to the books of account and relevant records of the Town” held by the BOS, BOE and other town agencies.

Fiscal Year 2025 Transfers

Questions about the BOF’s authority have become particularly pointed as Wilton’s FY25 budget numbers are finally being reconciled.

It recently came to light that a handful of department transfers — including several above $10,000 — had occurred without the proper approval by the BOS even though BOS policy prohibits the first selectman or town administrator from sanctioning such a transfer without BOS approval.

On July 27, the BOS unanimously approved $1,300,329 in transfers recommended by Savo to retroactively reconcile the FY25 books and move the overdue state-required audit toward completion.

While some BOS members said they would still seek answers from Boucher about why the overages occurred in the first place and who authorized them, they agreed to approve the transfers to expedite the audit process.

The transfer issue, however, involves two distinct questions.

One is whether required BOS approval was obtained for certain transfers under the selectmen’s own policy.

The second — and legally disputed — question is whether transfers between town departments also require BOF approval.

In a June 4 memo written by attorneys Nicholas Bamonte and Brendan Liberti, members of the Berchem Moses law firm that represents Wilton, town counsel stated that BOF approval was not required for transfers between town departments.

In a response memo dated July 27, Birch, who is also an attorney, said he believes the opposite to be true.

“Emasculates Power of the BOF“

“By adopting the legal analysis of the Memo,” Birch wrote, “which as I have written above I do not believe is accurate, it essentially emasculates the power of the Board of Finance to oversee the line-item budget of the Board of Selectmen.”

“If the Board of Selectmen can move funds around a variety of line items without the consent of the Board of Finance, it renders that power meaningless,” he continued. “The Board of Selectmen can approve a budget, then effectively rewrite it without any oversight.”

Healy said she had been doing some research and found that other towns in the vicinity require BOF approval for similar transfers.

“The statute’s pretty clear,” Birch said with a chuckle.

He suggested he could only ask for the meeting with town counsel but couldn’t make them comply, adding he has twice communicated his disagreement to the BOS and Boucher and requested a meeting with town counsel.

“That has not occurred and I don’t know if it will occur,” Birch said, adding, “I’ve suggested the BOS talk about it. To my knowledge, they haven’t.”

Asked how the dispute could ultimately be resolved if town counsel and the BOF continued to disagree, Birch said more confrontational remedies exist.

“I’m not sure we really want to go down that road. You would contest the actions of the Board of Selectmen. It may be a lawsuit, but you’d be actively contesting it,” he said.

Birch added that should the BOF actively contest the BOS’s actions, the potential first step would likely be mediation, probably with town counsel, before resorting to litigation.

Red Flags, Questions Ignored

Some BOF members reflected Birch’s concerns over how difficult it has been to get the issues addressed.

“Why would we not put it in front of the BOS again?” Roberts said.

Birch responded that he already had.

“I’ve sent it to them twice,” he said. “I’m not sure what more I can do.”

Healy said the Town still has not provided a complete accounting of transfers over $10,000 that did not receive required BOS approval. 

“What was supposed to happen is everything over 10,000 which was not approved properly by the Board of Selectmen was supposed to be identified and provided to the Board of Selectmen, and that has yet to be done,” she said.

“Most recently, the first selectman has admitted to repeated violations of the requirement to have the Board of Selectmen approve expenditures over $10,000,” Healy continued, noting she herself brought the issue up in January but it was not acknowledged by Boucher, Savo or the BOS until almost six months later.

Concerned that the BOS appeared to have moved on from FY25 questions entirely without addressing them, Healy said she still had a large list of questions dating back to budget season which Town Hall had never completely answered.

“The answers were very disappointing,” Healy said. “There was no dollar amounts. There were no account numbers. There was no analysis. There was no details. It was either incomplete or just not provided to us at all.”

“They were ignored,” she said.

Healy repeated that the Town Charter requires the BOS and town administration to provide answers to the BOF upon its request.

“The public has come forward and expressed concerns in what they see as red flags,” Healy said. “Things are not getting addressed.”

What Authority Does the BOF Have?

BOF Vice Chair Rudy Escalante repeatedly returned to a different question: Exactly what authority does the BOF have to intervene.

“I understand the concerns,” Escalante said. “My question was, as the Board of Finance, what authority do we have to be involved in that?”

Healy responded, “She spent money without approval. How do we not have authority over that?”

Escalante said he understood the concerns and agreed that procedures appeared not to have been followed.

“We’re skipping the steps. We’re not following proper procedures,” he said. “It seems rather egregious, but as the Board of Finance, other than saying that’s really egregious, we…”

Healy suggested informing the auditors.

“We haven’t been following the policies. We need to follow the policies,” Escalante said. “But my specific question is, what can we do as the Board of Finance?”

Birch said that if the problems continued, the BOF would have to consider further action.

Oversight, Yes. But Power to Enforce?

The questions follow months of concerns over Wilton’s financial management and come as the BOF is attempting to assert a more active role in audit oversight.

Under the Town Charter, the BOF has substantial financial responsibilities including access to the Town’s books and relevant financial records, as well as specific authority in the annual budget process, supplemental appropriations and proposed bonding.

What is less clear from the Charter is what enforcement power the BOF has when it believes another town body has failed to follow a policy, does not respond to a request or does not implement corrective action recommended following an audit.

That same distinction was also evident in Tuesday’s debate over the new audit-remediation subcommittee: the BOF can oversee whether corrective actions are being implemented, but it’s up to town administrators to actually implement them.

That leaves a question the board returned to repeatedly Tuesday: What happens when oversight identifies a problem but does not itself carry the authority to compel town officials to fix it — or do so themselves?

Last month Boucher announced that there would be a joint meeting between the BOF and BOS to discuss the FY25 overages and other issues related to the financial accounts, but no meeting has yet been scheduled.

The BOF has separately sought a tri-board meeting with the BOS and BOE to discuss future financial reporting. Birch said Tuesday he has not heard back about that request either.

Meanwhile, his disagreement with town counsel over the BOF’s authority to approve transfers remains unresolved.

“My objection stands,” Birch said. “I don’t think it’s the correct reading of the statute in connection with the Charter. I don’t see any authority for the opinion that has been rendered.”