Caltrans Chief Repays State for ‘Mistake’

State Transportation Director Leo J. Trombatore, who in recent weeks has expressed shock and outrage regarding overtime and travel expense abuses by Caltrans employees, has himself paid back $1,200 to the state after acknowledging he received too much in car mileage reimbursements.

Trombatore, 59, who has headed the Department of Transportation since Gov. George Deukmejian took office 3 1/2 years ago, said through a spokesman that the excessive expense payments he received resulted from “an honest mistake.”

Caltrans spokesman Gene Berthelsen said the overcharges resulted from Trombatore’s occasional use of his personal car for state business. On those trips, Berthelsen said, Trombatore has been claiming 30 cents per mile in expense reimbursements. But under state rules, Trombatore is entitled to no more than 16 1/2 cents a mile for using his own car because the state provides him with a car.

“The rule is you can only charge 16 1/2 cents if there is a state car available,” Berthelsen said. “It was an honest mistake. . . . Soon as he discovered it, he paid the state back.”

On May 19, Trombatore sent a letter to all 15,000 of his employees that began, “It is time to clean house.”

“I have been shocked by disclosures over the past several months of misuse of overtime, misuse of personal vehicle mileage and improper charges for travel expenses,” Trombatore wrote in the letter.

And, in a speech to Caltrans district directors last week, Trombatore said that “unethical and illegal practices by any Caltrans employee can result in termination. . . . If you are looking for a slogan, you might put this one over your desk: ‘Steal public monies, and you’re through.’ ”

Berthelsen said the discovery that Trombatore’s own expense account was in error resulted from sweeping audits the Caltrans director ordered last month regarding the expense claims of all agency managers.

Claimed Living Expenses

Trombatore’s order came after Assembly Transportation Committee Chairman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda) revealed that a deputy district director in the department’s Los Angeles office had claimed three years of out-of-town living expenses although it appeared he had established local residency.

The Los Angeles-based Caltrans official, Richard P. Doyle, has since been ordered to pay back $6,000, Berthelsen confirmed Monday. But he said the investigation regarding Doyle’s expense claims is continuing.

The day after Trombatore’s “clean house” letter was circulated, two San Diego-based cashiers, who were later fired, were suspended from their jobs because more than $13,600 in state funds was reportedly missing. Both cashiers--Linda Silverthorn, 34, and Karen Knight, 34--have denied responsibility for the missing funds, Caltrans officials say.

Caltrans’ deputy district director in San Diego has also been suspended and faces possible demotion for “inadequate supervision” of the cashiering office, Caltrans officials say.

Trombatore’s own expense claims were questioned in an anonymous letter sent to Katz and to the Los Angeles Times. That letter did not mention Trombatore’s mileage reimbursements, but charged that he and his wife had used a state airplane to visit his mother-in-law in Inyo County when she was ill.

Charge ‘Totally False’

Berthelsen called the airplane charge “absolutely totally false.” He said that because Trombatore was needed at an emergency meeting in Sacramento on May 23, he was flown to the capital from Bishop, where he had been vacationing, and back to Bishop again. “Mrs. Trombatore did not set foot in that plane,” Berthelsen said.

Berthelsen said the state aircraft was determined to be “the cheapest way to get him (Trombatore) here,” when department officials had to interrupt his vacation.

For the past 3 1/2 years, Berthelsen said, Trombatore has made a point of using his own Chrysler New Yorker, instead of his state-supplied 1985 Dodge Diplomat, whenever his wife accompanied him on a state trip. Trombatore did not want “to give the appearance of taking a pleasure trip in a state car,” the department spokesman said.

Meanwhile, the association that represents 7,000 engineers employed by the state, more than half of whom work for Caltrans, announced Monday that it has censured Trombatore and called for his resignation. It asserted that Trombatore had destroyed department morale by leveling “arbitrary, capricious and discriminatory” charges against employees.