How convenient it will be for the town of Colonie if allegations that County Waste & Recycling, for several years, purposely understated the amount of waste it dumped at the town’s landfill prove true. The amount of the alleged cheating is believed to be in the vicinity of $15 million — just slightly under the amount of the town’s deficit identified in a recent state comptroller’s audit. If the town could somehow recover that money, its financial problems would be largely solved.

But even if the whistleblower’s claims do pan out, it wouldn’t really absolve the previous town administration — booted out of office last November — that rang up the huge deficit: It was either unaware of how out of whack the town’s books had become, or knew but didn’t do anything to address the problem.

Given so lackadaisical an approach to bookkeeping, it’s not hard to believe the claim by a former County Waste employee as to how things may have been working at the landfill: County Waste trucks routinely being allowed to dump their loads without being weighed, submitting phony weight slips indicating much lighter loads, and subsequently paying far less in tipping fees than they should have.

It’s a serious criminal allegation that remains to be proved. Toward that end, investigators from the state attorney general’s office and Department of Environmental Conservation appear to have acted in proper fashion Thursday — simultaneously raiding County Waste offices in Clifton Park and the town landfill, seizing computers, interviewing employees and so forth. Now state investigators have to determine if the whistleblower’s scenario is accurate, which, depending on how careful County Waste managers might have been in covering their tracks, may not be too easy.

In the meantime, the allegation should serve as a heads up to officials in any municipality operating a multimillion-dollar landfill. Opportunities to commit fraud abound, so well-established operating procedures and strict oversight are essential.