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Saturday, August 25, 2012

Giving credit where credit is dubious

City school credit, procurement cards show culture of spending
Baltimore school administrators spent roughly $500,000 during the past year and a half on expenses such as a $7,300 office retreat at a downtown hotel, $300-per-night stays at hotels, and a $1,000 dinner at an exclusive members-only club, credit card statements show.

City school officials defend the majority of the credit card expenditures — outlined in statements and receipts obtained by The Baltimore Sun through a Maryland Public Information Act request — as "the cost of doing business," saying only a handful of "outliers" show questionable judgment or disregard for taxpayer money.

A review of credit card transactions and receipts by The Sun found that the bulk of the expenditures — about $300,000, generated by 16 central office employees — were made under a new procurement-card program that has operated with virtually no controls or oversight since it began in January 2011.

Card statements show that many of the expenditures violated the school system's own protocols and restrictions for use of the cards, such as a prohibition on using them for travel or to buy gifts for employees.

Amid Sun inquiries, city school officials have acknowledged that they took a series of corrective actions. The schools chief, CEO AndrĂ©s Alonso — whose card, sometimes used by his assistant, incurred a $66.77 charge to Victoria's Secret on Valentine's Day that was later removed after the system reported it as fraudulent — defended the program.

"Overall, people use the program in exactly the way we thought they were going to," Alonso said in an interview. "There's always going to be a margin where you give people flexibility, and they're not always going to use it in the way that you want [them to]."

Before last year, most school officials who needed to make work-related purchases had to either use their own money and seek a reimbursement or borrow one of several Bank of America credit cards used by the schools and registered in Alonso's name.

Asking people to pay their own travel expenses and seek reimbursement later would pose a financial burden for many employees, Edwards said.

Among those questioned transactions were a $450-per-person office retreat at the downtown Hilton, during which the 16 employees of the Information Technology Department were also treated to a $500 dinner at Brazilian steakhouse Fogo de Chao; and a $264 lunch for students at Hooter's.

The $67,000 in travel to conferences for a handful of office administrators, including an $8,000 trip to Las Vegas for a bullying conference, reflects the system's "overinvestment in professional development," she said.

And Edwards said that when a school administrator took a group of high school students to Hooter's during a student leadership conference in Atlanta, they didn't eat in the main dining room, where waitresses were wearing their trademark skimpy uniforms, but rather in a separate area served by a fully clothed manager.
Yes there will always be problems, but government is best served when it monitors and discloses the problems itself rather than have them brought to light in headlines.

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