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6 Investigates: Following the Money
Posted: Jan 9, 2013 5:19 PM by Andrew Ellison - aellison@kristv.com
Updated: Jan 9, 2013 6:40 PM
CORPUS CHRISTI - We have more details tonight on a report by the City Auditor's Office that takes a hard look at how your tax dollars are being spent.
As we've told you, the report reveals some alarming trends.
Many city employees use city credit cards to buy things for their department, but the report reveals some employees may have made purchases they weren't supposed to.
Among the questionable transactions were five purchases for IPADS, two payments to the online site PayPal, and other purchases that appeared to be for personal use.
But city policy states that purchases for any technological items must go through the Municipal Information Systems Department, and these purchases did not.
And payments to online sites like PayPal are strictly prohibited.
In one instance, the auditor found a signature on a receipt that didn't belong to the cardholder, suggesting that a city employee lent someone else their city credit card.
So we tried to find out who signed for someone else's card, which department bought the IPADS, and who made the payments to PayPal, but when we tried to ask the city those questions, they told us that information was confidential.
The report also revealed that some former city employees still had active city credit cards.
But councilman Mark Scott says these findings have more to do with understanding the rules than foul play.
"I don't think any of us thought that there was anything illegal going on, we just think there could be a better way, better policies in place, make sure everybody knows the policies," Scott says.
And if those findings alarm you, consider this: that was a just a small group of transactions that the auditor checked out.
To be exact, 51 transactions were checked out of over 33,000 that took place over the period of the audit.
The city says they are in the process of implementing policies to make sure rules for city credit cards are more closely followed.
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