City Worker Questions Layoff Notice : Budget: Inglewood accounting manager says her job is being eliminated because she reported spending irregularities. Officials deny the charge.

Inglewood accounting manager Shally Lin, who may lose her job in a round of city budget cuts, is claiming she is being fired because she regularly questioned city officials about spending public funds on such things as food, flowers and travel.

City Atty. Howard Rosten and other officials called Lin’s charges ridiculous, maintaining there is nothing improper about the city’s expense account system and that Lin was not fired.

They said that Lin, like dozens of other employees, was notified earlier this month that her position will probably be eliminated on July 1 because of the city’s budget crunch.

“This case has absolutely no merit and it’s premature,” Rosten said, noting that the council still must approve the layoffs when it considers the budget next month.

Lin’s attorney, Laurence B. Labovitz, has sent the city a letter saying Lin will pursue legal action for discrimination and for wrongful termination. According to Lin, City Finance Director Nick Rives told her on May 7 that she was being laid off and to clean out her desk and leave her office keys.

“It was shocking that they asked me to leave,” said Lin, who insists her service to the city the past six years has been exemplary. As accounting manager, she oversees such things as payroll and expense accounts.

Rives referred all questions to Rosten. And according to Rosten, as well as City Manager Paul D. Eckles and Assistant City Manager Norman Y. Cravens, Lin was told that her job was among those deleted from the budget that the administration will send to the City Council later this month.

The three officials also said that Lin asked if she could take as much time as she needed to look for another job, and Rives told her she could do that with pay. City officials say that Lin apparently does not plan to return to work before July 1, but she will remain on the payroll. Cravens said Lin was given more time than any other worker scheduled to be laid off.

In an interview Wednesday, Lin said that she is losing her job because she has doggedly tracked all expenditures. She said, for instance, that earlier this year she found checks for travel advances to both Eckles and City Councilman Garland Hardeman had been cashed even though the trips were canceled.

Hardeman did not return calls from The Times. But Eckles said that he and Hardeman accidentally cashed checks for trips that were later canceled. When the mistakes came to light, Eckles said, he and Hardeman reimbursed the city.

“These checks come up here,” Eckles said, “and sometimes it’s weeks in advance and it doesn’t say what trip they’re for.”

Lin also complained that when Eckles has lunch with elected officials, the city of Inglewood picks up the tab. The most frequent lunches, she said, are with Mayor Edward Vincent. Eckles said he tries to meet with the elected officials regularly and if they eat a meal he is reimbursed.

Lin also said that Les Curtis, director of the Parks and Recreation Department, charged the city for flowers he bought for city secretaries. Curtis acknowledged that on two occasions he charged the city for flowers sent to the funerals of city employees.

Curtis said that until Lin informed him, he did not know that the city did not pay for such expenditures. A policy directive was subsequently sent to all departments telling employees not to charge flowers and his department has complied, he said.