Unlike Montgomery County Public Schools where eating out on the MCPS procurement card is a perk that goes with the job, Montgomery County's Planning Director Rollin Stanley has been ordered to turn over his agency credit card. The Washington Post's Miranda Spivack reports.
Montgomery County's planning director Rollin Stanley has been ordered to turn in his agency credit card and has paid back about $600 for meals and other expenses auditors said were wrongly charged to the agency, officials said. Stanley also reimbursed the agency for about $600 in personal cellphone calls....Amazing! If Mr. Stanley worked for MCPS he would have just been called an "administrator" and he would have simply been one of 1,400 employees able to charge the taxpayers!
...Stanley, 51, who joined the Montgomery planning agency 18 months ago, said he is being singled out for special scrutiny and is "frustrated" by the probe....True enough. In MCPS using a procurement card for restaurant meals, gifts for a co-worker or candy for staff is considered part of the job and no audit will change that, even if those uses were prohibited by MCPS policy in place at the time.
..."If I am accountable for something, it is that I haven't been giving them [detailed] receipts and I owe them $11 for a beer I bought for a guy who had worked for 38 years and retired," he said. He said he had never been audited to this extent in previous jobs...Not turning in receipts and logs? The Maryland Office of Legislative Audits discovered those issues at MCPS. But MCPS didn't take any action on that issue.
...Acting Montgomery Planning Board vice chair Jean Cryor, who also sits on the bi-county commission's audit committee, said she thought the audit would help the Montgomery agency improve internal practices. "An audit is done to find the challenges and procedures that aren't followed as well as they should be . . . to find how we can do better with taxpayers' money."...Don't worry Delegate Cryor, the next generation knows better! Just take a look at what the Whitman High School students wrote about MCPS' credit card usage here!
"He said he had never been audited to this extent in previous jobs..."
ReplyDeleteThis sounds just like our old friend "Dr." John Q. Porter late of Oklahoma City Public Schools. He learned how to spend money without any need to account for expenses right here at MCPS. "Dr." Porter said his hobby was collecting rolex watches as we all recall.
Kudos to Ms. Spivack for digging for this story. Time for the Wash Post to step up to the plate and conduct similar investigations into MCPS.
Any updates on this?
ReplyDelete