Excessive charges
PennDOT needs to take its $500 ceremonial scissors and cut up a thousand charge cards. When it’s done it needs to loan the scissors to other state agencies to do the same. Auditor General Bob Casey said in just one year PennDOT employees, armed with 1,097 credit cards, racked up $43 million in charges. His auditors sampled $370,000 of the purchases and determined nearly 70 percent were wasteful. PennDOT employees bought breakfasts, lunches, snacks and silly items that have little to do with running the state’s transportation system.
While this might sound like nickel and dime stuff, it adds up. Since 1997, Casey has been conducting similar audits of state agencies (Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources, Corrections and Labor and Industry were previous targets) and has determined that $500 million worth of food and merchandise appeared on state-issued purchasing cards. Most of it a foolish waste of taxpayers’ money.
The auditors arrived at this conclusion by tracking down expenditures and determining that PennDOT spent $500 for a pair of ribbon-cutting scissors and ordered jumbo mushroom caps stuffed with crab and shrimp. The details – convertible car stress relievers, rubber ducks, coconut chicken with orange marmalade, Top Flite golf balls – spell excess. PennDOT employees will attempt to justify the purchases, but why would anyone need a mirror that clips onto a computer screen unless they were obsessed with watching their back.
Not only are the purchases disturbing, but PennDOT fails to track the cards and doesn’t even know who has them or whether they have fallen into the wrong hands.
The auditor general is often accused of political nit-picking, but the governor should welcome his findings, especially as he sets about the task of trimming the state budget to offset an anticipated $2 billion deficit. Perhaps he can borrow PennDOT’s scissors.
Casey should be encouraged to continue exploring these charges at every level of government, including legislative accounts that have so far been kept out of his domain. If so much waste is found in departments that know someone is looking over their shoulders, imagine the potential for excesses when the watchdog is barred at the House door.