TORONTO -- Some Ontario municipalities say the province shortchanged them on money needed to cover the fallout from implementing a problem-plagued system for administering welfare and disability payments, but the government says money isn't really what they need.

The Social Assistance Management System cost $240 million to design and implement, but was so riddled with issues that the Liberal government has spent another $52 million to address them.

That included $15 million to municipalities to help cover staffing costs such as the overtime front-line workers racked up as they dealt with the system's errors, fixes and workarounds, but some municipalities say that wasn't enough, and now they are left footing the bill for the extra costs.

"This process, since the beginning, has been fraught with many, many problems and one of the biggest problems outside of waste of time for employees is the incredible amount of dollars that it's cost trying to fix these problems in overtime, etc.," said Brantford Mayor Chris Friel.

Ontario gave the city $221,400, for the 2014-15 fiscal year and said that would be it, since the system has stabilized, Friel said.

"We don't recognize that the problems have been solved and we continue to rack up ridiculous overtime and we expect to be compensated for it," he said.

Weeks after SAMS was launched in November 2014, serious defects and performance issues became public -- it erroneously queued up $20 million in overpayments and $382,000 of that was actually paid out.

The ministry is also looking into an additional $35 million in potential benefit calculation errors highlighted by the auditor general in her annual report last year.

The City of Hamilton received $549,600 from the province, but says the actual cost to the municipality has been close to $1.4 million.

"While we are no longer in crisis mode, there are still challenges and frustrations with SAMS," Hamilton's community and emergency services department said in a report.

The city is seeking the shortfall of about $820,000 from the province, but the Liberal government doesn't appear to be budging.

The municipalities that have asked for more money to deal with SAMS didn't spend all of their allocated funds for social assistance administration in 2015-16 -- Brantford spent $4.76 million out of $5.07 million -- Joshua Henry, a spokesman for the Ministry of Community and Social Services, said in a statement.

"Additional funds do not appear to be what they need," he wrote.

"We are reaching out to these municipalities to determine how else we can best support them and help them to benefit from the technology as other municipalities are starting to do."

The City of Ottawa had requested $1.2 million in compensation from the province last year for SAMS costs and received $487,350.

Aaron Burry the city's general manager of community and social services, said the additional costs were covered through "various mitigation measures."

Since then, the city has sent another request to the province, asking it to "invest in local training centres to certify new and returning staff in SAMS."

Progressive Conservative critic Randy Pettapiece said municipalities shouldn't be paying "for the province's misadventure into this computer system."

New Democrat France Gelinas said she isn't surprised municipalities need more money, because there were a lot of extra costs to make sure people got their social assistance.

"The municipalities are the ones that ended up having to muddle through this mess to make it work on the ground because they are the employers, they are the people who deliver the service on behalf of the province," she said.