The newest installment in Syracuse’s payroll modernization saga played out Thursday in City Hall. 

At 11 a.m., the Common Council held a Finance, Taxation and Assessment Committee to discuss a report from FoxPointe Solutions, a division of The Bonadio Group, on the city’s Bureau of Information Technology and the city’s so-far ill-fated payroll modernization project. 

The council and a mayor’s spokesperson had declined to release the report prior to the meeting. 

Not long after the meeting ended, just before 1 p.m., the mayor’s office made the report public in an email to the press. 

Ultimately, the draft report recommended the city review the work product of Ernst & Young, one of the consultants contracted to carry out payroll modernization, and make sure it matches the deliverables the city contracted with EY to receive. 

Corey Williams, who chairs the Finance, Taxation and Assessment Committee, said the report left him with unanswered questions. 

“We’re all looking for clarity. I think there’s a lot of moving parts. There’s a lot of history,” Williams said. “There’s a lot that has been going on over a multi-year period with a number of different vendors. I think that, really, the water is muddy.”

Thursday’s back-and-forth between the council and mayoral administration continues months of squabbling between the two groups. The city’s payroll modernization project and its budget process, normally even-tempered undertakings, have sparked flare-ups between the Democratic mayoral candidates: Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens, Councilor Pat Hogan and Councilor Chol Majok. 

The city’s project first came under scrutiny when Central Current in December reported the city had missed another deadline to launch a portion of its payroll modernization project. At the time, the project had cost taxpayers millions more than the city expected and had blown through deadlines. 

Not long after Central Current published its reporting, the Common Council approved the $88K FoxPointe audit of the city’s information technology systems and the payroll project. 

In January, Central Current then reported that a contractor involved in the project accused the city of using her firm as a “pass-through” to EY, a claim the city has since denied. 

Chief Administrative Officer Corey Driscoll Dunham and councilors in Thursday’s meeting debated the project, its funding, and what the audit may reveal about potentially dubious decisions made by city leadership, including Dunham’s predecessor, Frank Caliva.


Caliva resigned from his position days after Central Current first reported on the problematic payroll project.

Neither Caliva nor Kelsey May, another city employee involved in the payroll modernization project, participated in interviews for the FoxPointe Solutions review.

Councilor Pat Hogan, who is also the Democratic Party’s designee in this year’s mayoral race, said the outside report and Dunham’s testimony in the committee meeting reflected the administration’s “culture of lack of accountability and management.”

Hogan criticized the city’s approach to reviewing where the project went wrong, and said he doesn’t think they are collaborating with the council to identify the project’s true failures.

“That was a good show,” Hogan said.

The city and FoxPointe have pointed out that the council approved all of the funding that went toward the ongoing modernization project. He defended their actions, saying that the council has less information to work with than city administration. 

“They’re supposed to look over projects and give us some information regarding how these projects are going,” Hogan said. 

The Common Council can subpoena testimony and documents to reveal more about the project, a step recommended earlier this year by a former council attorney.

After the meeting, Williams expressed optimism for working with the administration to see the project through its completion.

“I’ve never been looking to assign blame,”  Williams said. “I look at where we’re at and where we need to get in the future, and I’m willing to work with anyone willing to work with me.”

Less than an hour later, Mayor Walsh published the FoxPointe Solutions report, and held a press conference on its findings.


Walsh told reporters that he decided to publish the report after councilors referenced portions of it during the finance committee hearing.

The report identified potential areas of savings for the city by merging disparate softwares between departments. 

Foxpointe also recommended the creation of a new chief technology officer position to oversee the IT and Analytics, Performance and Innovation departments, which were responsible for the payroll project’s implementation. 

Dunham told the council that the city had planned to create this position, but that the council’s budget cuts last month may complicate the incorporation of that oversight role into the city’s administration.

“That’s not a new idea. We included a CTO position last year that was talked about by the council,” Walsh said. “We have presented it again this year. The council did make cuts to IT, but we think we can account for those, and still get to the organizational structure that we need.”

While Walsh admitted mistakes were made along the way in the payroll project, he reiterated that a project of this size was a difficult undertaking. Further, he said the Foxpointe report absolved the city from accusations of illegality.

“You’ll notice that some of the words that have been thrown around over the past year, like ‘fraud,’ are nowhere to be found in this report, because they’re nowhere to be found,” Walsh said. “The report determined, as we did, that the procurement process was followed.”

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...