Mount Vernon Is Not on the State’s Fiscal Stress List. Nobody Can Say Whether It Should Be.

On October 2, lohud reported that the Village of New Hempstead, population about 5,500, had the worst fiscal stress score of any municipality in New York. The scores come from State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s Fiscal Stress Monitoring System, an annual early warning on the finances of every county, city, town and village outside New York City. Twenty-two local governments made this year’s list.

Mount Vernon wasn’t one of them. The City’s general fund ended 2021, the last year with audited statements, more than $34 million in the red. Mount Vernon has had no credit rating since 2019. City Comptroller Darren Morton’s own reports show deficits in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Mount Vernon is missing for one reason: City Hall hasn’t given the State Comptroller’s office the numbers it needs to score the City. Mount Vernon turns up on page 16 of the State Comptroller’s report, in an appendix of governments that didn’t file their annual financial reports in time. It has been a non-filer every year since 2016.

So a village of 5,500 people gets a fiscal stress score, and Mount Vernon, a city of nearly 74,000, does not. The State Comptroller’s office can’t score what City Hall doesn’t report, and in a December letter to residents it said it “cannot compel local governments to file.”

What the City’s own numbers suggest

The State Comptroller’s score runs on numbers each government reports about itself. Half of the score comes from fund balance, the cushion in the general fund. Under the scoring rules in the State Comptroller’s Fiscal Stress Monitoring System Manual, a general fund at or below zero earns all 50 of those points. That alone puts a government in the lowest stress category, susceptible to fiscal stress, before deficits, cash or short-term borrowing are counted.

Mount Vernon’s general fund ended 2021 more than $34 million below zero on both fund balance measures the State Comptroller scores, according to the City’s 2021 audit, finished this April. Morton’s unaudited reports show a $9.5 million general fund surplus in 2022 and deficits in each of the three years after. If the City’s reports match the numbers Morton has already published, fund balance alone would put Mount Vernon on the stress list once it files on time.

The State Comptroller’s September report says governments that start filing after years as non-filers often turn out to be in fiscal stress. This year’s list has two examples. Dunkirk hadn’t been scored since 2018 and New Hempstead since 2021. Both filed this year, and both landed in the top category, significant fiscal stress.

The State Comptroller’s office keeps hitting the same wall

Section 30 of the General Municipal Law requires Mount Vernon to file an Annual Financial Report with the State Comptroller within 120 days of the end of each year. The State Comptroller’s filing tracker shows the City four reports behind, 2022 through 2025. That gap is the latest in a long record of the State Comptroller’s office trying to examine Mount Vernon’s finances and finding too little to work with:

• In 2020, state auditors found the City hadn’t filed its reports for 2016 through 2019 or produced audited financial statements since 2015. City officials lacked the financial information to manage the City, and Mount Vernon lost its credit rating as a result.
• In 2022, state auditors found $16.4 million in payments and withdrawals by the former City Comptroller that were not properly authorized. They could not tell whether a sample of 125 bills had been reviewed on time, because she never dated her sign-offs.
• In February 2025, when the State Comptroller’s office compared cities’ federal pandemic aid with their pre-pandemic revenues, it left Mount Vernon out because the City had not filed an annual report. All it could say was that Mount Vernon received $20.6 million in each of 2021 and 2022.
• In December 2025, state auditors following up on the 2020 audit said they could not fully assess the City’s revenues because its records were incomplete. Morton told them he could not project the City’s fund balance until its financial statements were up to date.
• In September 2026, the fiscal stress system could not score Mount Vernon for the tenth year in a row.

What Morton inherited, and what he controls

Morton inherited much of this. When he took office in January 2022, five annual reports were already overdue, and he told state auditors the City’s books were in significant disarray. His office has since filed the reports for 2016 through 2020, and the tracker indicates the 2021 report has gone in since December.

The four reports missing today all came due on his watch. Morton told state auditors last December that the City files each report only after its outside auditors finish that year. The State Comptroller’s September report says the deadline doesn’t wait: governments must file on time “irrespective of when their independent public accounting providers complete their work.” State auditors have already reviewed the City’s unaudited statements for 2023 and 2024, so those numbers exist. Because the City Comptroller’s office waits on the auditors, the State Comptroller’s office has no annual report from Mount Vernon for any year after 2021. After ten years and repeated state audits, the City’s missing records are hard to read as an accident.

The State’s response: more money

The State Comptroller’s office says its hands are tied, though Section 30 does let DiNapoli demand a $5-a-day penalty from a financial officer who refuses or willfully neglects to file. A state fiscal monitor would take an act of the Legislature, and the State Comptroller’s office told residents it has no authority to appoint one.

Meanwhile, this year’s state budget gave Mount Vernon $10 million to help close budget gaps, plus $2.5 million in formula aid, according to Governor Kathy Hochul’s May 28 announcement. The announcement says nothing about the reports the City owes. New York State is helping close budget gaps in a city its own fiscal stress system hasn’t scored since 2015.

The Mount Vernon City School District, a separate government with separate books, files on time. The State Comptroller has designated it in fiscal stress seven years running, and the 2024-25 state budget authorized a state fiscal monitor for it. City Hall has neither a score nor a monitor.

What should happen

• City Comptroller Morton should file the 2022 through 2025 reports without waiting for the auditors, as the State Comptroller’s office says the law requires.
• State Comptroller DiNapoli should say whether his office has ever demanded the $5-a-day penalty from a Mount Vernon official, and if not, why not.
• Governor Hochul, Senator Jamaal Bailey and Assemblyman Gary Pretlow should tie the City’s next round of state aid to filing its reports.

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