The City of Omaha needs to improve the way it tracks work hours in the Fire Department, State Auditor Mike Foley said Thursday, though there was no evidence that employees cheated taxpayers by getting paid for time they didn't work.
“They need to tighten up their controls and have a better, more modern approach,” Foley said. “We don't go that next step and say ‘You've got an abuse problem.' Ultimately we came to the conclusion you can't prove this one way or the other.”
Foley announced his findings at a press conference with Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle, Finance Director Pam Spaccarotella and Fire Chief Mike McDonnell. Foley said city officials cooperated with his office during a lengthy review of the Fire Department and have shown willingness to address areas of concern he found.
After a new record-keeping system is put in place, Foley and Suttle said, state auditors will perform a full review of Fire Department finances. Foley said that would be pointless now.
“We can't audit records that don't exist,” he said.
Payroll-tracking concerns predate the Suttle administration. Foley said problems have also shown up in other Nebraska jurisdictions he has examined.
Spaccarotella said Omaha next year will adopt a new computerized payroll-tracking system, which the city will obtain through a grant to monitor police overtime. Spaccarotella said the system can be expanded to the Fire Department.
In the meantime, her office already is requiring new daily reports from the Fire Department's administrative bureaus. Those reports document whether employees were on duty as scheduled or took sick leave or vacation time.
For decades, firefighters in those bureaus have been issued city paychecks based on work schedules and reported vacation and sick leave.
Foley said his office received tips from people inside the Fire Department that some firefighters assigned to administrative jobs did not show up for work as scheduled but were paid. He said the lack of additional attendance reports left his auditors unable to confirm or disprove those reports.
McDonnell defended his employees.
“These are hard-working firefighters,” he said. “They are doing nothing but their jobs.”
The time-reporting problem pertains mainly to employees in the administrative bureaus such as fire investigations and training offices, not to firefighters who work out of station houses. Most firefighters work 24-hour shifts and their attendance is tracked in multiple ways.
Foley's office began looking into Fire Department finances in February after receiving complaints of financial improprieties. At least some of the complaints came from the Omaha Alliance for the Private Sector, an advocacy group headed by Omaha businesspeople.
David Nabity, a spokesman for the group, said Thursday that Foley's findings should be investigated by the Nebraska Attorney General's Office. He also called for McDonnell and other fire officials to be fired and for Suttle to be recalled.
“There needs to be a full investigation,” Nabity said. “We're just going to pretend that there hasn't been fraud, that there haven't been crimes committed here? I don't think so.”
But Foley said he has no evidence that any criminal acts were committed and said he has not referred any information to law enforcement.
Mayoral spokeswoman Aida Amoura said Nabity is wrong to make such charges.
“There is no misappropriation of money” in the Fire Department, Amoura said. “The word-twisting needs to stop.”
Suttle said Foley's review reinforces his administration's efforts to improve Fire Department finances. He noted that Spaccarotella already has worked to reduce overruns in the department's $69.5 million annual budget and has assigned an accountant to closely monitor Fire Department spending.
Suttle said the review “identified necessary changes we have been working to correct and has provided suggestions for future measures we can implement to further enhance our financial oversight of the Omaha Fire Department.”
Foley did have harsh words for the Omaha fire union and its lawyer. During the investigation, auditors had questions for union officials about the hours they said they worked on union business, as allowed by their labor contract.
But when auditors showed up for a scheduled interview, union attorney John Corrigan told them he wanted the questions to be submitted in writing. Union President Steve LeClair eventually submitted written answers to the auditors' questions, but Foley said he wasn't satisfied.
“It raises a giant red flag,” Foley said. “It is troubling when people will not answer routine, simple questions.”
Corrigan wrote in a letter to Foley that his clients were under no obligation to agree to an interview, and he advised them not to respond to auditors' questions.
Foley said his office questioned why LeClair had claimed six hours of union-related work during his regular schedule. Past union leaders have used hundreds of hours.
The cost to taxpayers is not affected by how much leave time union leaders claim; the rate of pay is the same. But there are limits on the number of union hours allowed. Underreporting those hours could be a way to keep union leaders under the limit.
LeClair's written response said that his day job in the Research, Development and Safety Bureau did not prevent him from doing his union duties, except for labor negotiations. Negotiations, under the fire contract, can be done during work hours without needing to be claimed as union time, he said.
Past union presidents have worked 24-hour shifts at fire stations and needed to use more union leave to take care of labor-related business.
While Foley's report centers on the time-reporting matter, he also looked into these areas:
Ÿ A $2 million grant, awarded to the city in January 2009 under the federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) program, that would have required the city to add 18 firefighters.
Because of tight city budgets, officials determined that they would not be able to afford the additional staffing and gave up the grant, reimbursing the $166,000 that already had been spent.
Foley said city officials handled the matter properly, although he noted that the city didn't formally end the grant until after his office began its inquiry.
Ÿ The nonprofit Kloewer Fund, established more than 30 years ago to honor a former firefighter. Money donated to the city-run fund has been spent on training, equipment and other fire safety-related efforts. Earlier this year The World-Herald reported that loose accounting and ambitious spending had largely depleted the fund.
Foley said the Kloewer Fund at times lacked proper documentation and made some mistakes, but the Suttle administration has improved oversight.
Now, Spaccarotella said, the fund will be managed by an outside nonprofit group.
Contact the writer:
444-1114, paul.goodsell@owh.com
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