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Corpus Christi City Auditor Following the Money

Posted: Jan 7, 2013 5:51 PM by Andrew Ellison - aellison@kristv.com
Updated: Jan 7, 2013 5:55 PM

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CORPUS CHRISTI - It's something we all want to know, is the city spending my tax dollars appropriately?

The city created an Auditor's Office just over a year ago to monitor that spending.

When the auditor checked out the city's $185 million payroll this past year... they found some problems.

After looking over a selection of employee pay checks, they found over half of employees didn't have proper approval for their hours.

28% didn't have proper approval for leave (vacation, sick days, etc..).

And 15% didn't have proper documentation for their overtime.

The auditor even found that some former city employees still had access and check-signing authority for city bank accounts.

Other problems were found with how employees use the city credit cards, or procurement cards, as they're called.

After investigating a number of credit card purchases, a report found that 57% were not properly approved.

The problems included missing receipts, purchases made for personal use, and signatures on receipts that didn't belong to the card holder.

City Finance Director Constance Sanchez says errors like these are unacceptable.

"We're held to a higher standard because we are using the tax payers money," she says.

So her department has a solution to help fix some of these errors.

"The finance department is in the process of hiring someone to go out to the departments and look into their documentation and make sure they're in compliance with the policies and procedures we have in place," Sanchez says.

We're told the auditor will have a report on the Utilities Department ready in just a few weeks.

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