Waste of the Day: Excessive Spending on Travel
Topline: Poor oversight in Broome County, N.Y., allowed officials to take expensive international trips, spend thousands of dollars on alcohol and parties, and get reimbursed for expenses without receipts, according to a May 29 report from the New York Authorities Budget Office.
Key facts: The problems came from within the county’s industrial development agency, which provides loans and tax breaks to small businesses to help create jobs.
The agency’s employees spent $239,908 on their county credit cards from January 2022 to June 2025, according to the report. Almost all of the purchases were made by Executive Director Stacey Duncan and Director of Operations Natalie Abbadessa.
The spending included $4,499 for 463 alcoholic drinks and $10,964 for “questionable meals,” the report stated. That included $5,000 for a buffet and drinks at a local restaurant in December 2024 and $528 spent on a board meeting lunch in February 2025.
There were no receipts for 22% of the credit card transactions, the report found. Another 18% had receipts that showed only a dollar amount but not what was purchased.
Auditors also found “excessive and unexplained travel costs” because employees were not required to follow daily spending limits during business trips. Most counties use per diem travel rates set by the federal government, which would have limited Duncan to spending $3,350 on hotels for five out-of-state trips. She instead spent $10,026.
During one trip to California in January 2025, Duncan paid $3,663 for a three-night hotel stay. She also spent $256 per day on meals. Two of her other trips had no receipts at all.
The agency has only six full-time staff members, who are overseen by a nine-member board of directors. However, the board had only limited input on purchases below $10,000. According to the review, “The Board’s lack of oversight increased the risk that inappropriate and questionable discretionary spending was undertaken, and unauthorized and unnecessary expenses were made.”
Duncan earns a salary of almost $180,000 per year, according to the report. She also gets a $6,000 annual car allowance and other perks.
Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com.
Critical quote: The industrial development agency disagreed with the report’s findings and called it a “misleading report that serves no legitimate purpose” in a nine-page response.
“The simple fact is that funds are used to further the mission and purposes of the [agency]. We object to a broad characterization that the [agency] had inappropriate spending,” the response states.
Officials noted that they adopted new spending rules recommended by New York State this March.
Summary: Broome County’s industrial development agency has spurred vital economic growth in New York, but the public deserves full accountability for how its budget is spent.
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