TUSTIN : Officials Say Audit Shows No Big Abuses

City Council members expressed relief Friday that an audit of city credit card expenditures made by ranking police officers uncovered no major abuses.

But one councilman, Jim Potts, complained that the city should have been able to stop unexplained spending before it became a public issue.

Potts said that even with the absence of a written policy on using city credit cards, someone in the city administration should have caught and stopped the practice of charging without providing explanations for the expense.

“We completely dropped the ball in following basic accounting regulation that credit card expenses be backed up by receipts, as even private companies follow,” Potts said.

The council ordered the audit in December after unnamed Police Department employees reported that ranking officers were using credit cards for expensive meals, gifts and flowers while some basic supplies were being rationed to rank-and-file officers, Potts said.

The allegation resulted in the recall of all city credit cards in December except for those issued to the city manager and the assistant city manager.

A preliminary review conducted by the City Council in December also showed that many of the charges were not backed up by receipts. The comprehensive audit by Diehl, Evans & Co. released Thursday confirmed that more than $14,000 in credit card expenses over a 30-month period have no documents to explain the charges.

In cases when receipts were attached, they were either incomplete or inadequate in determining the reason for the expense and who was responsible for it, the report said.

However, Mayor Leslie Anne Pontious and Councilmen Thomas R. Saltarelli and Charles E. Puckett said there is nothing in the audit that they don’t already know.

Councilman Jeffrey Thomas said he had just returned from a trip and had not yet read the report.

“There was nothing surprising,” Pontious said. “There’s also nothing that requires further action from the council, other than what we have already taken.”

Pontious said the council has implemented stricter controls, including requiring a monthly expense report from city employees.

Saltarelli also cited the tighter controls as a benefit from the audit. He said he was also pleased that the report did not find major problems.

“It’s a great relief for me,” Saltarelli said. “People were not stealing money.”

He said the Police Department should not be faulted for not reporting credit card expenses properly because there was no clear policy in the first place.

“Nobody thought it was a problem in the past, Saltarelli said. “But, when something like this comes up, we have to act.”

For his part, Puckett said the audit will help the city in the long run because “we have tightened our accounting and reporting controls.”

“It’s too bad we have to go through the allegations,” Puckett said. “We could have handled it internally.”

Overall, Police Chief W. Douglas Franks said, he was pleased with the audit’s findings.

He said total credit card charges averaged to a little more than $1,000 a month during the 30-month period. He described those charges as “modest, considering that the department has a budget of $9 million” this fiscal year.

“This is an indication that the department is run in an efficient manner,” he said.