Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Is nobody in city government minding the store?
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
dan.casey
@roanoke.com
981-3423
Dan Casey
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Have you ever paid $41 for a steak?
Or $55 for a bottle of wine?
I haven't. Guess you could say I'm stingy.
We can't say the same for Dave Morgan, the former general manager of Roanoke's nonprofit bus system.
While federal, state and city taxpayers were subsidizing Valley Metro to the tune of $5.5 million in operating funds, Morgan was working his Valley Metro credit card overtime.
From July 1, 2007, to June 30, 2008, Morgan racked up $13,251 in charges for meals and drinks on the bus company's tab.
On average, that is $255 each week.
And because that is an average, it actually understates what he spent during many weeks.
In November 2007, Morgan spent $1,595 at restaurants with that credit card.
We know all of this from a report, loaded with mouth-watering, thirst-quenching and tank-filling detail, issued last week by Roanoke's Municipal Auditing Department.
The $41 rib-eye steaks and $55 bottles of Chianti were purchased at Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse in New Orleans. They were part of a $577 tab that Morgan -- I mean Valley Metro -- picked up for himself and eight others on Sunday, June 1, 2008.
Not all of these expenses were for food. A lot of it was for alcohol -- such as the 17 drinks Morgan -- and presumably others -- consumed between 1:49 and 5:18 p.m. on Valentine's Day 2008 -- a Thursday. Of those, 14 were supersized 23-ounce beers. That was at Buffalo Wild Wings in Roanoke, and the auditors found it was one of five times Morgan visited that restaurant with his Valley Metro credit card during the workday. The receipt is found under the Auditor's Exhibit 7, which is titled "Meal Charges During Work Hours."
Morgan charged $638 in gasoline to his Valley Metro card when he was actually on paid leave. Among other places, those fill-ups occurred in Myrtle Beach and Dillon, S.C.; Asheville, N.C.; and Pittsburgh.
There were other expenses, of course. Precisely $171 for cigars, and $860 in golfing fees.
And though it's not precisely clear, the auditors found that Valley Metro paid Morgan $1,185 in travel reimbursements for expenses incurred on the same days he was charging up a storm on his company card.
The auditors didn't flat-out call that double-dipping, but there's more than a whiff of that suggestion in their report.
And there is more.
Like with the travel expense scandal that ensnared former Roanoke City Councilman Alfred Dowe early in 2008, some of the folks Morgan listed as having bought dinner and drinks have no recollection of it.
Another recipient doesn't even appear to exist.
That would be the person whom Morgan listed in his documentation by the name "B. Clever."
Which when you think about it, is a big, fat tipoff that he wasn't.
Dowe's unusual expenses were first exposed by a reporter from The Roanoke Times, and his illegal actions were later confirmed by the municipal auditor and a court.
Morgan's expenses did not come to light until the same auditors began looking into an unrelated scandal at Valley Metro, which a private company manages but which is supported by tax dollars and accountable to city hall.
The big question is, in both cases, was nobody minding the store?
In each instance, somebody -- at city hall in Dowe's case, and at Valley Metro, in Morgan's -- had to authorize these expense payments, right?
If the answer to the last question is "no," well, that needs to be fixed now.
The municipal auditor seems to do a pretty good job of catching cheats, usually long after the fact.
Somebody else ought to be catching them much sooner.
