County Commissioners tighten P-Card rules

Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

Following a recent lengthy discussion over purchasing cards (P-Cards), officials approved implementation of several actions to correct the problems that have surfaced over the alleged abuse and misuse of the county-issued charge cards.
Among the changes, the Jefferson County Commission signaled its intent to update and strengthen the P-Card policy; designated County Coordinator Parrish Barwick as the P-Cards administrator, with responsibility for ensuring that all purchases made on the cards are appropriate and legitimate; required that all cardholders given a copy of the policy and must acknowledge its receipt with a signature; and requested that Clerk of Court Kirk Reams surrendered the P-Card in his possession.
For any unfamiliar with the controversy, P-Card are a type of charge card issued by the county to select employees for use in the purchase of goods and services related to official use. The controversy involves the discovery of the use of the p-cards for personal purchases, regardless whether the money was reimbursed or not.
Commissioner Chris Tuten initiated the discussion, offering that Barwick be made the card administrator and that all cardholders be made to surrender their cards and have to sign a form attesting to receipt of the policy before being reassigned the card.
“And if the P-Card policy is violated, it should result in termination,” Tuten said. “There is too much hearsay and this and that about the abuses going on. We need to nip this in the bud.”
And if changes needed to be made to the policy, so be it, Tuten said, adding that he had already asked County Attorney Scott Shirley to review the policy.
Commissioner Stephen Walker agreed.
“I can think of absolutely no excuse for putting personal purchases on P-Card,” Walker said, adding that as a City of Tallahassee employee he had had a p-card for 20 odd years and had never abused it.
Walker said that what often got people is trouble was that they used the p-cards for personal purchases to avoid paying taxes, as government entities are tax exempt. In his view, however, there was no excuse for such use, he said.
“And if somebody makes a personal purchase and pays it back, it should be with a personal check,” Walker said. “It should not be with any other source, but a personal check. If you don’t pay it back with a personal check, I wouldn’t consider it paid back.”
Barwick assured the commissioners that he now had online access to all P-Card purchases. He acknowledged that reviewing all the statements to determine their legitimacy would be time consuming, or time-restricted as he said. But his office would do it, he said. He allowed, however, that notwithstanding the several rumors and accusations, the p-cards had been monitored over the years.
“By whom?” Commissioner Betsy Barfield asked.
“By individuals in the clerk’s office, who have been doing our financial reviews for years,” Barwick responded, mentioning a specific individual in the office whom he said provided reports and did whatever was needed.
Walker wanted to know if anyone from the clerk’s office had ever alerted anyone of the inappropriate use or misuse of the P-Card.
Barwick responded that actually, the last two discoveries of P-Card misuse had resulted from a citizen questioning their inappropriateness.
“It’s not working then,” was Walker’s blunt assessment of the current system.
Shirley walked a fine line in his assessment of the P-Card policy, saying it placed an inordinate amount of responsibilities on the clerk’s office. He noted that under the current system, not only was the clerks office the P-Card administrator, it also set the purchase limits for the cardholders, was charged with reporting misuses of the cards to the department heads, answered questions about what constituted official purchases, and processed the payments on P-Card purchases.
“I’m not going to get into the clerk’s office’s business, other than to say that I think it would be appropriate for the clerk’s office to maybe propose some internal controls, with regards to its own p-card administration, so that it can better manage and administer the card,” Shirley said.
He offered his advice with great caution, he said, as he didn’t want to get into a war with the clerk’s office.
“I think the clerk’s office needs to engage in some introspection and come up with a proposal that builds more layers of control so that they can audit themselves or have maybe have an outside audit occasionally,” Shirley said.
He also thought that some part of the P-Card’s could be better clarified, such as what constituted official use.
Walker returned to his point that misuse of the card was inexcusable.
“I can’t believe that anyone got us into this situation,” Walker said. “But this isn’t our money to spend like we like to. This is the taxpayers’ money. I know we’re getting a lot of calls about it. It’s ridiculous what the public perception is of our handling of the p-cards. And I see no excuse for it that anyone would charge anything personal, it don’t matter what it is. I think it’s a criminal act, personally.”
Barfield strongly supported the county coordinator being given oversight of all P-Cards and looking over every expenditure.
“I agree the P-Cards have been abused,” Barfield said. “I have scrubbed down all those P-Card statements, and it’s pretty shocking.”
Culp, who is the finance director in the clerk office and was representing the office in Reams’ absence, saw a different motive in the P-Card scrutiny.
“I would say that this is certainly a political issue that has morphed over the last three or four months,” Culp said. “I was the P-Card administrator at the department of education and rolled out 800 cards. I mean the policy we have is what we had there. I wrote this eight years ago. This is a political issue.”
Walker adamantly disagreed it was a political issue, at which Culp attempted to clarify his meaning.
“What I’m saying is that we could do away with the P-Cards,” he said. “Again, most of our charges are two different entities that are using it for small dollar purchases and we have purchase orders that are opened anyway. If this is such a hot topic, why don’t we shut it down and have no P-Cards?”
Walker asked if the clerk office could produce copies of the personal checks used to repay back personal purchases on the P-Cards”
“Gosh, I guess we could,” Culp said. “Yeah. We just have to look for them.”
Not to pick on the library, Culp said, using the department as an example. But say the library got confused and purchased food and beverages for an event that should have rightfully been paid with funds from a literacy alliance grant, the director would later have to write a check against the literacy grant to cover the amount.
“Maybe she got confused,” Culp said. “But yes, it would be reconciled with the monthly statements. So yes, we could go back for a number of years.”
Was he saying, Barfield asked, that the clerk’s office could reconcile all statements on Amazon charges? Because, she said, significant number of Amazon charges appeared on the P-Card statements.
“I would say that they are legitimate,” Barfield said. “But who really knows, whether it’s legit or not?”
Culp said he had no idea of the Amazon charges, returning to the library.
“Are you’re talking about the library?” he asked, reference the Amazon charges.
“No, it’s all over,” Barfield said, naming other departments showing Amazon purchases. “And my concern is, are they supplying the statements that back up the purchases. Because, what is not reimbursed, the county commission is paying that. And if someone is using the P-Card to travel, are they following our travel policy? If you’re going to use our purchasing card, you’re going to have to abide by purchasing policy and our travel policy. And who is watching that?”
Fire Chief Derrick Burrus appealed to the board not to paint all the departments with the same brushstroke.
His department, he said, regularly used the P-Card and he turned in receipts for every purchase, he said.
“If you take the P-Card away from Fire and Rescue, it’s going to send our vendors into a tailspin and cause a lot of work,” Burrus said. “I don’t mind audits all day long. I’ve never made a personal purchase with a P-Card. But please, don’t indiscriminatingly take away P-Card from these departments, we need them for daily operations.”
Finally, Barfield returned to the issue that had set off the entire review of the P-Card policy, Reams’ use of the card to make contributions to two private organizations and other alleged questionable uses.
“I believe the clerk needs to turn his P-Card in,” Barfield said. “I don’t believe he needs to be using anyone else’s.
Culp assured her that Reams would. He also already had his own P-Card, straight out of the clerk’s office account, Culp said.