Auditors reviewing Erie County’s use of homeland security funds have again spotted a computer glitch that costs taxpayers money while giving employees wages they did not earn.

The county’s new, multimillion- dollar computer system is given a standard shift for an employee, say 9 to 5. But when a worker changes a shift for some reason, to work, say, from 9:30 to 5:30, the computer can award a half hour of overtime pay or an hour’s pay if working 10 to 6.

Auditors described the problem Monday in releasing an otherwise favorable review of the county’s use of $14.1 million in homeland security money that has flowed from the federal government through the Urban Area Security Initiative.

Erie County officials in 2004 and 2005 paid the salaries of 40 employees assigned to emergency concerns and purchased two patrol boats and nine vehicles, eight of which are assigned to employees around the clock.

County officials installed security equipment and communications systems throughout county buildings, including the new Public Safety Center. In 2006, officials bought six more vehicles, a tactical armored vehicle and a 32-foot mobile command center, but county auditors did not examine 2006 spending as part of the report made public Monday.

County Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz said his staff found that county officials rightly followed procedures as they spent the millions while under the watch of state and federal agencies. While County Executive Joel A. Giambra over the years has placed political appointees into some jobs supported by homeland security money, the audit did not mention the practice.

“Internal controls on the use of homeland security funds are robust,” Poloncarz said, “and no material violations of federal, state or county policies were found.”

But his staff again found those potentially costly payroll glitches that can occur with any county department, homeland security-related or not. The comptroller’s staff fears that these mistakes — so far isolated and involving only small amounts of money — might be occurring governmentwide and adding up to real waste.

With unearned overtime, the problem seems to arise when employee hours for the week are keyed into the computer. The system sees that workers ended the shift later than their standard time but does not reconcile the shift starting later.

In August 2006, auditors found that some of the county employees who are allowed to hold two county jobs were paid simultaneously for both, a problem the county’s SAP computer system was supposed to prevent.

Personnel Commissioner John W. Greenan theorized at the time that a coding error — not malfeasance — caused the problem. Monday, Poloncarz urged that Greenan and the government’s technology specialists again go to work on the payroll problems.

The audit staff also found that employees received “beeper pay” when they shouldn’t have. The government gives an extra $35 a week to employees required to wear beepers, unless during the week they deem themselves unable to respond or don’t respond. Then they forfeit the $35.

The auditors looked at payroll records for four employees over the course of two years and saw they had received beeper pay for a total of 192 weeks. Auditors found beeper pay should not have been paid in 55 of those weeks.

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