YELLOW SHEET
Office of the State Auditor of Missouri
Claire McCaskill
|
|
YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri |
Report No. 2004-86
November 18, 2004
The following problems were discovered as a result of an audit conducted by our office of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners.
The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners (KCBPC) assigns take-home vehicles to 377 personnel. At least 151 of these 377 personnel were sergeants and higher ranking officers. There are four general criteria for assignment of a take-home vehicle:
� The employee is subject to standby/on-call duty.
� The vehicle is assigned a security status because it contains department equipment or operates in an undercover capacity.
� The assigned workplace of the employee has very limited parking.
� The vehicle is funded by grants requiring the vehicle to be kept in high visibility status.
We noted that 248 of the 377 personnel assigned take-home vehicles fell under the standby/on-call criteria. Based on information provided by personnel assigned a take-home vehicle, we estimated that 168 employees with take-home standby/on-call vehicles were called back less than 3 times each month. The annual cost of the commuting mileage for the 168 take-home standby/on-call vehicles was about $329,000. We estimated the cost of reimbursing the 168 employees for the use of their personal vehicles in lieu of providing a take-home vehicle in these limited use situations would have been about $34,000 annually, resulting in an annual savings of about $295,000. In addition, eliminating the commuting mileage placed upon the take-home vehicles would result in a reduction of nearly 1 million fleet miles annually.
We also found the KCBPC could further reduce cellular telephone expenses by ensuring established review procedures are fully performed each month, and by changing some phones to more economical plans. We obtained the cellular bills for 475 phones that were not assigned to undercover operations. During the three years ended April 30, 2004, the department spent about $866,000 for cellular services for these 475 phones. Of that amount over $133,000 was paid for excess minutes and roaming charges.
During the three years ended April 30, 2004, our review noted expenditures which do not appear to be a necessary and prudent use of public funds, including $32,630 for retirement rings, $32,398 for annual unit dinners, and $23,949 for flowers and fruit baskets. A similar condition was noted in our prior report.
The Records Unit receives mail-in requests for copies of accident reports primarily from insurance companies. The entity requesting a report must submit either a check or a coupon to pay the $5 fee. On April 7, 2004, we noted that the report production section had a backlog of 643 unfilled requests and had 443 checks totaling $2,546 and 200 coupons being held pending the mailing of the accident report. The oldest bundle was from March 16, 2004. The unit assistant supervisor indicated the sixteen working day backlog was fairly typical.
The current method of handling the mail-in accident report requests and monies results in a lack of detailed receipts, lack of segregation of duties, and delays in the transmittal of monies. In addition, the accounting unit cannot reconcile records unit receipts to monies transmitted to the accounting unit.
A follow-up on prior audit findings from audit report number 99-115, released December 6, 1999, found the KCBPC has not implemented our recommendation to reevaluate the department policy of compensating retiring employees for any unused sick leave. We found the department paid out approximately $3.75 million for the three years ended April 30, 2004, under the sick leave buyout program. We still recommend the department consider reevaluating the current policy.