Zoo Assn. to Hire Controller to Avoid Fiscal Irregularities

The board of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn. will hire a controller and take other measures to guard against a recurrence of several fiscal irregularities that an internal investigation has uncovered, association officials said Monday.

Among those irregularities was the purchase of a $5,500 watch by the president of the association, a paid staff member, on the credit card provided to her for business use, according to Thomas R. Tellefsen, chairman of the board of the association.

Tellefsen said association President Marcia Wilson Hobbs made “an error in judgment” in purchasing the Rolex watch on the credit card of the nonprofit corporation. He said there was “no malicious intent or indication of bad faith involved.”

Hobbs broke her watch while on a business trip in Columbus, Ohio, in September, 1985, and, because her personal credit card was extended to its limit, used the association’s card to purchase a replacement, according to an internal report by a board task force set up last August to review management policies.

Hobbs, who was to receive an $8,500 bonus at the end of 1985, directed that all but $3,000 of that amount remain in association accounts as a way of covering the bill, the report said.

“The transaction was done in poor judgment, and the accounting treatment of the transaction was in error, “ said the internal report, which was completed last October and made available to The Times on Monday.

Tellefsen said Hobbs has now repaid the small amount of interest that the association paid on the credit card for the watch purchase.

The report found these other irregularities:

- For purposes of convenience to Hobbs, the zoo group was to make $500-a-month payments on her Audi, which she used, in part, for association business. The payments were to be deducted from her paycheck. However, during a period from February, 1985, to June, 1986, the deductions were not made because of an error by the association’s bookkeeper, Tellefsen said.

Tellefsen said Hobbs failed to notice the mistake because she assumed that an increase in salary, which she was due, had been added to her paycheck. It hadn’t, again because of the bookkeeper’s error, he said.

- Hobbs, president of the association for the past six years, over the last three years bought more than $2,000 in tickets to local political fund-raising dinners. “Typically, they were for one ticket at about $250 each, three or four times a year,” Tellefsen said.

He said Hobbs had purchased the tickets “in good faith,” considering the tickets a legitimate purchase for purposes of public relations. But the purchases were “outside the proper realm of a nonprofit organization,” he said. She has now reimbursed the association for the tickets.

- Hobbs and other staff members failed to keep proper records of gifts given as a matter of protocol by the association to foreign officials, such as the Chinese who agreed to lend the Los Angeles Zoo golden monkeys and giant pandas. Although these gifts were never worth more than $400, “detailed records” were not kept, the task force report stated. They will be in the future, Tellefsen said.

- Hobbs lost $3,000 worth of receipts designed to account for a $10,000 cash advance for a May, 1985, trip to China. She has now “reconstructed” the receipts and will in the future keep a daily log, Tellefsen said.

The task force investigation concluded that Hobbs and other association staff members “acted in good faith and without any deliberate attempt to bypass any law or rule. . . . In terms of the annual $7-million GLAZA budget, all amounts reviewed were not significant, and prompt reimbursement was made when appropriate.”

Although the board’s task force, investigating with the help of a private accounting firm, found that some of the irregularities “reflected poor judgment . . . all were openly done and available in GLAZA’s records for review.”

For these reasons, Hobbs will not be disciplined by the board, Tellefsen said.

Hobbs, in an interview Monday, said she regrets the errors but is particularly “very sorry about (the watch purchase) because it will be used to demean all of GLAZA’s accomplishments.”

Audit Begun Last June

Tellefsen said the board organized its task force after the city Department of Recreation and Parks began an audit of the association in June, within a day or two of firing Zoo Director Warren D. Thomas.

Board members, in negotiations with city officials, got the department to drop its audit and replace it with an audit by a third party acceptable to both the association and the department--the city controller, Tellefsen said. The controller’s audit is continuing, he said.

Tellefsen said Hobbs’ relationship with city staffers “has been difficult.” Hobbs has backed Thomas, who was fired by department head James E. Hadaway last June, only to be reinstated to his job earlier this month. She has also pushed recommendations that responsibility for the zoo be transferred from the city to the association.

The zoo association, through donations and profits of the concessions it operates at the city zoo, provides about $3 million of the $12-million annual operating costs of the zoo. It also funds animal acquisitions and capital improvements, such as the new children’s zoo, scheduled for construction next year.