Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Administrator, P. R. guy ripped off taxpayers

The Dade County audit, released today by Missouri State Auditor Claire McCaskill's office, definitely makes it appear that two Health Department employees were ripping off Dade County taxpayers.
You can find some of the information in the last post. The audit indicated that the administrator continued to pay the public relations director exorbitant amounts even at a time when the department was going deeply into the red.
"It is unclear why the board allowed this employee, who served in a public relations capacity to work excessive and unusual hours when the health center was deteriorating," the audit said.
You might chalk it all up to poor management, except for some of the outlandish payments that were made.
For instance, on April 24, 2003, the public relations director put in for 24 and a half hours of work and on other instances, public relations work was going on for 14 to 16 hours on Saturdays and Sundays.
And it wasn't just the public relations officer. The former administrator "was double paid for half a month's salary in March 2004," according to the audit. And "the board approved mileage reimbursements for the former administrator during 2003 and 2004 totaling $2,317 although supporting documents could only be located for $124 of this amount."
And at one point, as mentioned in the last post, the Health Department Board traded some of its furniture for furniture owned by the public relations director...but made the decision illegally during a closed session.

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