WOONSOCKET, R.I. (WPRI) — Woonsocket Mayor Christopher Beauchamp lambasted city councilors Thursday, saying their "disrespectful, unprofessional and accusatory" actions spurred an outside auditing firm to abruptly quit earlier this week.

Beauchamp, who served as council president before becoming mayor last November, said he was caught off guard when he received a letter Tuesday from auditors at Hague, Sahady & Co., a firm hired to examine the city’s finances.

In the letter, principal owner Mary Sahady explained they were ending their services because they had "lost confidence in the integrity of city management." She laid out a series of problems they've faced working with the city, including a City Council meeting on May 22 where she said councilors accused the firm of having been influenced by former Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, whose administration hired the firm.

"I'm convinced they left mainly because of the way they were treated at that meeting," Beauchamp told Target 12 on Thursday, adding that the councilors essentially accused the auditors of "colluding" with the former mayor.

"I'm not happy with the way they were treated," he said.

City Council President John Ward, who is running against Beauchamp for mayor this fall, pushed back on the criticism. He told Target 12 the council was "simply expressing some concerns" over repeated delays the city has faced in submitting audits to the state government that help inform regulators about the health of the city's finances.

The audits also help inform the councilors when trying to devise the city's budget, which is currently underway for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

"They may have taken exception to the tone, but I don't think they were unfair questions," Ward said Thursday. "It's rather slanted to accuse the council of being the cause when it is just as easy to point to the problems created by the mayor and her poor management of the city."

The auditors' exit comes at the same time the city is already months late submitting its annual audit for last year's budget to the state, a yearly requirement of all cities and towns. The reports are typically due each year by Dec. 31.

Beauchamp said he reached out to apologize personally to the accounting firm, adding that he's hopeful they will change their minds and finish the audit they were working on.

If not, Beauchamp said, the city will have to hire another company — and that will likely cost Woonsocket taxpayers a lot more money than what they were paying Sahady's firm, he said.

"They'll have to start from scratch, so I'm hoping that's not the case," he said.

At the May 22 meeting, councilors expressed frustration with the auditors, grilling them with questions about why their audits have been late. They also suggested a former city employee under Baldelli-Hunt backdated and signed certified tax rolls long after they had been put into effect, which they said was improper if not illegal.

"It could be there was a sensitivity to challenging questions that I think may not have been there had the prior administration not put us in this bind," Ward said.

The auditors pushed back on accusations that they didn't act independently -- a legal requirement of any auditing firm that examines a municipal budget. They said Baldelli-Hunt was never involved with their reports, and Beauchamp echoed the sentiment on Thursday.

"They are independent auditors, they audit what the city gives them," Beauchamp said. "They don't do investigations on things they might hear on the radio or see in the paper."

Councilors questioned specifically why the auditors hadn't raised red flags in the past when they said the former administration artificially inflated property values for many commercial taxpayers.

The issue came to a head recently when the city entered into multiple settlements that will ultimately cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments and lost revenue. Other property owners have challenged the same issue in court, suggesting taxpayers will be facing additional shortfalls.

Beauchamp again defended the auditors, saying it wasn't their job to investigate individual tax assessments.

"If we give them information about certain tax appeals, they can look at that," he said. "We didn't give them that information."

Beyond the issues surrounding the firm's relationship with city officials, Sahady also wrote that the city has been routinely late in providing financial information and still hasn't handed over 43 of the 110 different accounts that needed to be audited.

She and state officials have said the city hasn't had enough financial personnel to properly track all the different funds flowing through Woonsocket, which has resulted in it being consistently late putting together the reports.

Beauchamp acknowledged that staffing problems have plagued the city's ability to properly report out its finances. But he said they've made strides in hiring new people, including a new tax assessor under Baldelli-Hunt, along with a new full-time treasurer and finance director.

Beauchamp said the city has been moving in a positive direction, but also said chasing the auditors out of town was the wrong move.

"We can't take two steps forward and four steps backward," he said. "I feel like that's what happened with the meeting with the auditor."