A city pension manager is on administrative leave after the audit's conclusions.

SARASOTA — A Sarasota pension employee is on administrative leave after the annual city audit found more than $30 million in accounting errors in the Sarasota's pension fund ledgers.

The audit identified a series of corrections, labeled material weaknesses, were needed to correct the formal end-of-year documents for the city's employee, police and firefighters' pension plans.

The errors were only on paper — the $30 million was never gone, simply misreported on general ledgers for those accounts — but city officials are raising questions about whether the problem is indicative of bigger issues in the office of City Auditor and Clerk Pamela Nadalini.

Outgoing City Commissioner Susan Chapman highlighted the issue at last week's City Commission meeting, noting that she only found out about the findings of material weakness after a constituent brought it to her attention. The findings are not listed until page 218 of the 247-page packet.

"The first issue is I wanted to make sure all of you knew this, because I missed it," Chapman, who will leave office next month, told commissioners. "Even though I’m the lamest of lame ducks, I still have a fiduciary responsibility. I also think it’s important to know what is the potential negative impact of this technical weakness. How is it related to the high turnover in the pension administration? How does it relate to the repeated complaints about the hostile work environment?"

"I think we have a crisis of confidence within the pension system right now and we need to figure out what to do about it," Commissioner Suzanne Atwell added. "The buck stops at the commission."

Nadalini acknowledged she is not proud of the audit's findings and that the department is adjusting its internal controls to ensure the errors do not happen again. Overall, each of the three pensions received clean, unmodified opinions from the audit, she said.

"The fact of the matter is there are a number of things we are doing very, very well within that department," she said. "This was not representative of the overall operations. This was representative of the individual keeping sloppy book work."

The errors were made by city pension manager Harry Ramphal, who remains on administrative leave, and involved either a lack of data entry or the misclassification of other data, Nadalini said.

Ramphal also was responsible for an overpayment of more more than $38,500 to one city retiree last year, which the city then had to try to recoup.

Nadalini had tried to "counsel" him before placing him on administrative leave, and defended him last week as a capable but underperforming employee.

But Ramphal has accused Nadalini of creating a "hostile work environment" and the city's human resources is now investigating the matter, Nadalini and Chapman acknowledged.

Chapman said she met with Ramphal to discuss the issues before last week's commission meeting and Chapman incorporated his allegation with concerns raised by pension board members over the past two years. Chapman's discussion at the meeting echoed points she and Nadalini sparred over in Nadalini's performance review last summer.

"Generally there’s two sides to every story," Nadalini said in response. "I believe if you give that opportunity for the other side to be heard, you’ll probably have a better frame or picture to see what’s really going on ... The audit did exactly what it’s intended to do, which is to identify areas to strengthen our internal controls."