Dutchess County Comptroller Dan Aymar-Blair has subpoenaed the county’s two elections commissioners and select Board of Elections employees, escalating a three-month dispute over whether his office has the authority to audit the process used to pay election workers.
The subpoenas seek documents and interviews related to the election-worker payroll process, according to a July 27 press release from the comptroller’s office. They may be the first subpoenas issued by the office.
Democratic Commissioner Lisa Jessup and Republican Commissioner Erik J. Haight say the proposed review exceeds the comptroller’s authority over an autonomous elections agency. In a joint statement emailed to the Herald on July 30, they said they would move to have the subpoenas quashed.
Aymar-Blair maintains that the audit is a narrow examination of county spending intended to determine why errors recur and whether the payment process for poll workers can be made more efficient.
Aymar-Blair said the audit is not based on an allegation that poll workers ultimately received inaccurate payments. His office identifies and corrects problems before checks are issued, he said.
In an interview with the Herald on July 29, Aymar-Blair said his staff had encountered a high rate of errors and audit questions while reviewing election-worker payrolls since at least 2024.
The comptroller’s office reviews payments made by the county, including its regular payroll and the separate payroll used to compensate temporary election workers. The county hired just over 700 poll workers for the June primaries, according to Aymar-Blair.
“As we do all that claims auditing, we are able to recognize patterns and see issues that are coming up,” Aymar-Blair said.
He said the election-worker payroll had generated “very high error rates, or lots of audit questions coming up for the election worker payroll.”
The problems have included missing or incomplete onboarding documents and incorrect names, he said. His office has discussed the issues with Board of Elections officials and offered to help improve the process.
Aymar-Blair said the problems identified by his office are corrected during the review process.
“In the end, the payroll is accurate,” he said.
The concern, Aymar-Blair said, is the additional staff time required to identify and resolve recurring errors. That work involves employees in the comptroller’s office, the Board of Elections, and the county Department of Finance.
“It’s not a matter of it being improper,” he said. “It’s just wasteful. You know, it’s an inefficient process.”
Aymar-Blair said his office has not calculated the cost of the inefficiency.
“We haven’t calculated the waste,” he said. “We just see it, and we want to address it.”
A Dutchess County poll worker, whose name the Herald is withholding because they continue to work elections, said they once waited between two and three months to be paid.
“Most of us who work the polls are doing it because it’s civic duty, as opposed to needing the money desperately,” they said. “But still, there’s really no reason why they should have to take that long.”
The poll worker otherwise praised Board of Elections staff as knowledgeable and responsive and said their Election Day assignments had gone smoothly.
Aymar-Blair notified the Board of Elections of the planned audit April 24, according to his press release. The board objected April 29, arguing that he lacked the authority to conduct it.
On June 16, Aymar-Blair directed the board to produce the requested records by June 30 and warned that continued noncompliance would result in subpoenas. His outside counsel extended the deadline to July 10 and offered to confer with the commissioners or their attorneys. The parties’ lawyers communicated, but the commissioners maintained their objection, according to the release.
Aymar-Blair told the Herald on July 29 that the commissioners’ attorney had confirmed receipt of the subpoenas. He declined to discuss further communications because the dispute had become a legal matter.
“This audit is very narrow, and we’re only focusing on the election worker payroll,” he said. “We’re not even focused on the hiring or training of these people, because that’s outside our purview, and we’re not looking at any other financial operations in the Board of Elections.”
On July 30, Jessup and Haight emailed a statement disputing the comptroller’s authority and rejecting his characterization of the board as uncooperative.
Jessup said the board already provides the comptroller with the records necessary to review election-worker payments.
“It’s unfortunate that the Comptroller is spending time and money subpoenaing records already in his possession,” Jessup said. “The BOE cooperates with the Comptroller after every election to review money spent to compensate Election Day workers and we will continue to do so. Not a single check is issued to anyone without the Comptroller’s close examination of payroll and approval.”
“This legal maneuver is confusing and unnecessary, and we will move to have these subpoenas quashed,” she continued.
Haight said the commissioners had attempted to explain their position that the board’s operations were outside the jurisdiction of a locally elected comptroller.
“We’ve tried our very best to educate the locally elected Dutchess County Comptroller that the operations of the Dutchess County Board of Elections (DCBOE) are outside of his purview,” Haight said.
“Based on common sense and on advice from personnel at the State Board, it is improper for a local elected official to review and ultimately attempt to dictate the policies and procedures of an autonomous BOE when we are mandated to administer the very election that puts him in office,” Haight said.
Haight said the Internal Revenue Service and the State Board of Elections had audited the Dutchess County Board of Elections during his tenure because those agencies were legally authorized to do so.
“In short, he can count pennies, not conduct a performance review under the guise of a financial audit,” Haight said. “That responsibility rests solely with the State Board.”
After receiving the commissioners’ statement, the Herald asked Aymar-Blair to respond to their argument about his legal authority.
“The law is written plain as day,” he said.
Aymar-Blair cited several provisions that he said authorize the audit. Section 577 of state County Law directs a county comptroller to “audit all claims, accounts and demands that are lawful county charges.” The law also directs the comptroller to certify county payrolls and review records involving county money and property.
The Dutchess County Charter directs the comptroller to “audit and certify for payment all lawful claims or charges against the County, whether for payroll or otherwise.” It also authorizes the comptroller to “audit the financial records and accounts of all units of County government charged with any duty relating to funds of the County or for which the County is responsible.” Those provisions appear in Sections 20.02(d) and 20.02(e).
Aymar-Blair also cited Section 4-136 of state Election Law, which states, “All expenses incurred under this chapter by the board of elections of a county outside of the city of New York shall be a charge against the county.” The same law states that the compensation of election officers in each election district “shall be a charge upon the county.”
The Dutchess County Administrative Code gives the comptroller “the power to subpoena and compel the attendance of witnesses and the production of books, records, and papers,” provided they are pertinent to the office.
The commissioners interpret that authority more narrowly. They say the comptroller may examine and approve expenditures but cannot evaluate or direct the board’s policies and procedures. That disagreement over the scope of the proposed review is at the center of the dispute.
Aymar-Blair’s office said previous comptrollers conducted audits involving the Board of Elections in 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2020. Aymar-Blair said the current review would be the first focused specifically on election-worker payroll.
Jessup also said she was dismayed by what she described as an effort to discredit the board in the media, linking her concern to broader attacks on public confidence in elections.
“Despite our attempts to resolve this issue and avoid litigation, it may be up to a judge to rule on the limits of the Comptroller’s purview over the operations of the Board of Elections,” she said. “This can happen when parties disagree, but I am dismayed to see that the Comptroller is seeking to discredit the Board of Elections in the media, especially in the current political climate where we have almost daily assaults on the credibility of our elections coming out of the Oval Office.”
In the July 29 interview, conducted before the commissioners issued their statement, Aymar-Blair said his objective was to identify problems and recommend ways to make the payroll process more efficient.
“My job is to identify financial operations that are in need of review and to review them,” he said.
I have been working the polls since 2018. It is my way of giving back to the community and taking part in something that I feel strongly about: the right to vote. I would be doing this even if I did not get paid. With that being said their payment MO is bizarre to say the least. For example, election workers will work the 1st Tuesday of November and won’t receive a paycheck until right before Christmas or close to New Year’s Eve. If any other business paid as such, it would be against the labor laws. What other employer would get away with waiting almost 2 months to pay their employees?