Markeshia Ricks Photo
Controller Daryl Jones and Mayor Harp announce new credit-card monitoring procedures this month.
The Harp administration told lawmakers that a trip to Washington, D.C., for the U.S. Mayors Conference this January cost roughly $2,500. The real cost ended up at least $7,225.
The Harp administration reported that a trip to Boston for another U.S. Mayors Conference this June cost roughly $4,500. The real cost ended up at $10,450.
And the Harp administration did not disclose a trip to Miami last year for a third U.S. Mayors Conference, which cost at least $3,850, including a $315 dinner that city officials enjoyed at a steakhouse known for its truffle-butter-stuffed dinner rolls and half-pound filet mignons.
The actual expenditures show up in city credit-card billing statements that the Independent obtained through a public-records request. (Click here to view the 227 pages of transactions, spanning from May 2016 through August 2018.)
The records don’t provide evidence of fraud outside of a previously reported incident of an employee racking up $11,000 in unauthorized charges for what appear to be motel rooms, rental cars, and lunches. (The city expects to be reimbursed by J.P. Morgan Chase for that alleged theft. The employee has since been terminated; police have also opened an investigation.)
The records do indicate that the city’s top officials haven’t been disclosing cross-country flights, hotel stays and hundred-dollar meals to the alders, as required by city ordinance.
The records demonstrate a challenge that the Harp administration said it’s taking on in the wake of the $11,000 misuse: strengthening its procedures for tracking credit-card use, which city officials said saves time on preparing invoices and money through a state rebate program.
However, the record is still incomplete. A billing statement from January 2017 was produced in an alternative format that excluded charges by Mayor Toni Harp and Controller Daryl Jones.
And among the pages that were released appear charges from more than a dozen trips that were never reported to the Board of Alders.
Two alders have called for a public hearing about the credit card usage.
“It is unclear if the administration’s inaccurate financial reporting is a purposeful attempt to hide more spending on government travel, or the result of poorly managing how departments report spending to the Budget Office, or both. Either explanation is unacceptable,” Downtown Alder Abby Roth wrote in an email. “The nondisclosure is an insult to taxpayers, who have a right to know how their money is being spent, and it undermines the alders’ responsibility to manage the city’s finances.”
The gaps in disclosure reflect confusion across multiple city departments about how to get their trips listed in the monthly budget reports, along with no clear guidelines about what counts as a reasonable expense.
The city said in a recent press conference that it’s trying to streamline its processes. With a new software program, they said, they’ll conduct a “real-time” review each time an employee swipes the plastic. The program will give officials a “newfound ability to identify anomalies sooner,” said city spokesperson Laurence Grotheer. But without any guidelines about what counts as a reasonable expense and when it must be publicly reported, it’s unclear just what the reviews will be based on.
Resort Stays, Underreported
U.S. Mayors Conference
In June 2017, Mayor Toni Harp spoke with other mayors about reducing gun violence …
… then had a 315-dollar dinner, without disclosing the trip to alders.
Twice a year, Mayor Harp and a few city employees go to the U.S. Mayors Conference for a few days of panels about the latest trends in local government.
Last June, Harp, Controller Daryl Jones, and Executive Administrative Assistant Andrea Scott landed in Miami. They checked in at the Fontainebleau, the iconic luxury hotel right on the oceanfront, where the U.S. Mayors conference was being held.
Towards the end of their trip, Mayor Harp charged a dinner at StripSteak, the hotel’s pricey steakhouse, totaling $314.80. None of the charges were reported to alders.
Before heading home, Controller Jones caught a flight to Los Angeles, and he checked in at the Millennium Biltmore, a luxury hotel downtown. He was there for a pension workshop, Grotheer clarified this week.
A few days later, Jones headed south to San Diego, where he stayed at the Hilton, a hotel near the convention center in the city’s historic quarter. He used the city’s card at four eateries: a New American restaurant, a craft beer bar, a Brazilian steakhouse, and the hotel restaurant. Grotheer said this week that Jones was there for a symposium on data and mapping.
Those extra legs totaled at least $3,080, and they also were not reported to the alders. The “inadvertently omitted expenses” will be reported in one of the upcoming monthly budget summaries, Grotheer said.
Under a city ordinance amended in 2005, the mayor must prepare a monthly financial report that tracks all travel expenses (along with other figures on tax collection, grants, pension investments, new hires, promotions and overtime).
Mike Gormany, the city’s budget director, said that he wasn’t sure why there would be discrepancies between what a trip actually cost and what was reported. He guessed that any inaccurate totals might not count all forms of payment or all the passengers on a trip.
Undisclosed Trips
In total, the Independent found at least 17 trips by city staffers that went undisclosed, totaling $26,000. They included multiple departments across the city: Mayors Office, Finance, Youth Services, Fire Department, Health Department, Parks & Recreation, and even the Board of Alders itself.
The Independent swung by City Hall to ask Budget Director Gormany about a $983 flight to Denver, which he explained was partially refunded after an employee could not attend, and business trips by a mayoral assistant to Palm Beach, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama. Spokesperson Grotheer did not offer a response to question about the purpose of those trips.
Overall, Gormany said, the city is getting better about making sure all travel is disclosed. Gormany estimated that his staff is currently tracking about 85 percent of all travel. He noted that sometimes the reports might be delayed for a few months, but they still make it in eventually. He added that some trips might be missing because the budget office can report only the information that other departments voluntarily send his way.
Based on checks with other departments, there appears to be confusion about the process. Several department leaders believed they were submitting all the paperwork they needed to turn in to Purchasing Agent Michael Fumiatti, who regularly pays for their approved flights on his credit card and records the reason why. But Fumiatti said in an interview that he doesn’t create budget reports for other departments.
Some employees also thought that if they paid back Fumiatti’s credit card purchase with their departmental funds, they did not need to report the trips. That’s why Byron Kennedy, the city’s health director, said he didn’t disclose that he was attending a medical conference in Chicago and a public health directors’ conference in New Orleans this year.
Even one alder’s travel didn’t show up on the monthly budget reports. Rosa Ferraro Santana, who serves on the Human Development Committee, traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas, for a National League of Cities event in June, but the $680 airfare wasn’t recorded.
Al Lucas, the head of legislative services, said that his staff normally sends all the back-up receipts to the purchasing agent to verify the costs, but he does not usually send an additional report to the budget director.
A Palm Springs BOOST
Thomas Breen Photo
City youth chief Jason Bartlett.
Others apparently believed that they didn’t need to report trips paid with special funds like a grant or a donation.
That’s why one parks department employee didn’t say he was going to Atlanta to represent the city at the Gallo Business Summit, “where scores of recreation directors from across the country had the chance to review, compare, and evaluate many of the latest products on the market [like] landscape maintenance and water park equipment,” Grotheer said.
The city was reimbursed in full for the cost of the trip, which might explain its omission from the monthly budget reports, Grotheer added.
Jason Bartlett too sent four employees who work with disengaged kids through Youth Stat to BOOST, the Best of Out-Of-School Time Conference, in Palm Springs, California. Bartlett personally didn’t attend, but he said it was a good professional development opportunity for his staff on how to run effective after-school programs. For one of the panels, he said, clinicians from Clifford-Beers presented on trauma.
The airfare and hotels cost about $3,950 altogether. Bartlett said the four employees who went submitted all their receipts, so he wasn’t sure why the trip wasn’t listed. He also wondered if it didn’t make it onto the monthly report because it was paid with special funds.
“Everybody knew [Youth Services employees] were going,” Bartlett said. He added that he checked in on the closing reports, because “as a supervisor, I want to know: What did you learn?”
Lunch At City Hall
The salad bar at City Hall go-to-eatery Taste of Brazil.
The bulk of the city’s tab comes from Comcast cable, Verizon cell phones, and bulk purchases for city government and public safety. But the most frequent charges are lunches and dinners ordered for the mayor’s office.
During the last fiscal year, Mayor Harp alone racked up $6,190 in local meals on her credit card. In total, Mayor Harp ate out on the city’s dime 117 times last fiscal year, not including her dinners while traveling.
The go-to restaurant, just down the block from City Hall, is Taste of Brazil, where she dined 35 times. The Greek Olive, where she ate 14 times, and Portofino’s, where she ate nine times, are just behind.
The most expensive bill was for a $245 meal at Taste of China in March.
So far, in the first month of this fiscal year, after hiking property taxes and delaying payments on the city’s debt, Mayor Harp is spending slightly more on dining than she did last year. Eleven dinners during July cost the city $590.
To get a better sense of whether these expenses are reasonable, the Independent asked Grotheer to take a look at three of the most expensive meals that Mayor Harp charged this summer: $150 at Jack’s Steakhouse, $101 at Shell & Bones, and $112 at Cast Iron Chef Chop House. Grotheer said he did not have details about how many people attended, whether they were with employees or constituents, and what public business was transacted.
Grotheer did say that city officials usually pay for meals whenever city business is discussed to avoid the appearances of being bought.
“There are ethics laws and good-government practices prohibiting city officials, either elected or not, from accepting gifts,” he explained. “So, if there’s a meeting over breakfast or over lunch or over dinner, and that meeting involves a city official and the topic is city business, the city will cover the cost to ensure not even the appearance of a conflict.”
Take Me Out To The Ballgame
The hundreds of credit-card purchases include tickets for the New York Yankees, the New York Mets, the Brooklyn Nets and the New York Jets. But City Hall staffers aren’t making trips out to the ballgame. Bartlett, the city’s youth services director, said he asked to buy those seats for New Haven youth, giving them a chance to spend a day outside the city with a mentor. Some of those outings with at-risk kids from Newhallville were covered through an Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, a federal program that provides funds for criminal justice.
“We are concentrating on experiential outcomes. Sports build character and teamwork. It can give kids a reason to go to school, a reason to do better because they have to maintain a certain G.P.A. to play,” Bartlett said. “From our perspective, we are supplementing the experiences that kids have in a school day with the different types of things that we do, like three-on-three [basketball games] at the Hoop It Up tournament. Or we can put everyone on a bus to New York City to see a Yankee game or a Mets game. We’re trying to build relationships.”
Yes, a public hearing and then a public recall are most definitely in order. Now we taxpayers know where our hard-earned dollars go. And if taxes go up 11%? "Let them eat cake." But i think the revolution is coming with or without guillotines.