Red flags ignored

Red flags ignored

For years, DeKalb Commissioner Elaine Boyer got away with fraud, pocketing tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars. Some fellow commissioners and other county officials also have been able to spend tax money in questionable ways without drawing notice. That’s because DeKalb lacks a strong system of oversight and overlooked or ignored warning signs of possible abuse. But the red flags were everywhere.

• No supporting documentation for expenses. Boyer and Commissioner Sharon Barnes Sutton each rang up thousands of dollars in purchases on their county Visa cards without providing required receipts. Even after audits cited Boyer and Sutton for violating the policy, no one enforced it.
• No-bid purchases. DeKalb requires competitive bids for purchases exceeding $50,000. But Boyer paid a supposed consultant — her cohort in a kickback scheme — $83,250 without drawing notice.
• Outliers and extremes. Among commissioners, Sutton blew away her colleagues in total office purchases. She also used her purchasing card to pay for a speeding ticket. Boyer and her top aide tapped the county to buy so many meals that it drew a rebuke from auditors in 2010 and 2011. Yet in 2012 they averaged two meals a week, and last year almost three — for a total of more than $11,000.
• Inflated expenses. Boyer went to Phoenix in 2012 ostensibly to look into problems with firefighter air packs, but she bought two airplane tickets for the flight. Commissioner Stan Watson has a county-issued cellphone, yet he tapped taxpayer funds to pay his personal cellphone bills to the tune of nearly $5,000 over three years.
• Missing assets. Sutton and her chief of staff used their purchasing cards to buy office equipment and electronics, and Sutton purchased a framed portrait of the president. But the picture and some of the equipment were not in Sutton's office. She and her aide had taken items home, ostensibly to do work there, without attaching county tracking codes.
• Questionable qualifications. Boyer's partner in crime for her kickback scheme was an evangelist, but she listed him as a consultant on legislative issues, transportation and Grady hospital. Her choice for a consultant on healthcare costs was a chiropractor who had previously rented an office from Boyer and her husband. In the watershed department, a fictitious company with no assets, no equipment, no employees and no experience won a multi-million-dollar services contract, grand jurors reported last fall.
• Duplication of services. During the first year Boyer had checks cut to the evangelist for supposed legislative analysis work, requisition records show she was already paying Bob Lundsten about $1,500 per month to be her legislative consultant. (She later hired Lundsten as her chief of staff.)
• Cozy relationships with vendors. Sutton approved checks for about $34,000 to her long-time boyfriend's companies, mostly for his advice on running her office. Their relationship became public record this year when, following an altercation, she told a police officer they had been in a relationship for the past seven years. Her comment was noted in the incident report.