State employees caught snoring on the job, riding in limousines, holding illegal raffles

San Diego Union-Tribune

Oct. 12, 2017 2 PM PT

A University of California, Davis, professor spent $996 for three limousine trips and collected $197 of other improper travel reimbursements during two months in 2015, according to a new state report.

A state Department of Industrial Relations employee who didn’t have enough work to keep him busy was heard snoring at his work station and photographed more than 20 times sleeping, texting and reading on his personal cellphone, and reclining with his feet on his desk. The employee’s estimated 328 hours of “downtime” in about a year-long period cost taxpayers an estimated $5,411.

An administrative office within the Department of Corrections hosted an illegal raffle for charity in December 2016. Tickets cost $1 each, and prizes included gift baskets containing ammunition and alcohol. State auditors said raffling alcohol constituted illegal sale.

These three examples are among six substantiated incidents of fraud, waste and abuse the state auditor included in its regular report on “improper governmental activities.” The Davis professor was an employee of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering whose travel helped bring in donations earmarked to support his research and education activities, the auditor wrote.

“However,” the report said, “the professor is still required to abide by UC travel and entertainment policies.”

The professor reimbursed the improper expenses, and the auditors faulted university bureaucrats for allowing the expenses in the first place.

Tips from whistleblowers prompted the investigations, which found state employees breaking the law, wasting state resources and failing to do the jobs for which taxpayers paid them, the report said.

Other cases summarized in the report include:

An analyst for the state Department of Social Services sent or received 398 personal emails from her state account in 10 months ending May 2016, mostly regarding her child’s school, her religion and personal finances.
A psychiatric technician at Atascadero State Hospital near San Luis Obispo did not report frequent absences on his time card, but reported numerous hours of overtime. He collected $7,540 in improper overtime pay within a year.
A Department of Water Resources employee failed to record frequent part-day absences on her time card. Within six months, she was paid an estimated $5,200 for at least 149 hours she did not work. She was gone so often she neglected her duties and repeatedly missed deadlines.

In all six substantiated cases summarized in the auditor’s report, the offending employees’ managers addressed the problems with counseling, training and performance monitoring, the report said. The report did not identify the location — headquarters or field office — of a given case, so it’s unknown whether any of the employees were in San Diego.

In the first half of 2017, the state auditor received 662 tips and investigated 677 new and open cases, the report said. Preliminary review found evidence too thin for investigation in 435 cases. The office made further inquiry into the remaining 242 cases, and investigated 50 of them with help from other departments.

Together the six substantiated cases, all summarized in the report, cost taxpayers $19,320 — plus the unquantifiable cost of negative social impacts such as eroded trust in government, failure to perform mandated duties and abuse of authority, the report said.

The state auditor investigates whistleblower complaints according to the California Whistleblower Act, which protects the identity of tipsters and the privacy of personnel involved in the confidential investigations, the report said.

Since the state auditor activated its whistleblower hotline in 1993, it has identified improper governmental activities that have cost the state a total of $576.6 million, the report said. The cost of social harm and savings from improved internal controls and elimination of problematic and criminal employees is incalculable.

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