A new DeKalb County executive order makes clear all elected officials must meet the same standards as county employees when spending on county-issued charge cards.
The order, signed Monday by interim CEO Lee May, and a new policy will allow the CEO to suspend or revoke the Visas known as P-cards for misuse.
It comes four weeks after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed Commissioner Elaine Boyer had racked up thousands of dollars in personal charges on her card and May’s repeated insistence that, given DeKalb’s divided government, he could not cancel her card.
Monday, he acknowledged he had not responded strongly enough to the allegations. His actions — and decision to audit Boyer’s purchases from 2011 to present — are designed to send a message to residents that they can trust him to tackle such questions head-on.
“Early on, I was quiet as I tried to figure out who was responsible and what power I had,” May said. “It is clear I think, though, that there has not been as good of oversight as we should have had. This should fix it.”
May’s order calls for moving P-card oversight to the county’s finance department, which can stop payment on any card. It also requires that all cardholders receive annual training and every card be audited yearly.
May said he believes the existing policy, which all 294 current cardholders agreed to abide by, did cover elected officials. But commissioners, who signed the agreement, have said they did not think the rules applied to them or their staff.
The new policy, which the county’s cardholders have two weeks to sign, for the first time specifically requires elected officials to follow a policy that allows revocation or criminal charges for spending abuses. County workers, though not elected officials, also can be fired for problems.
The policy also defines accepted uses for P-cards for both elected and hired workers. Some differences include allowing elected officials to spend on travel, while other workers cannot.
It also cuts each elected official’s monthly P-card allowance from $5,000 to $2,000, the same for supervisors with the cards in other departments.
That means county commissioners, for instance, could spend only up to $24,000 a year on the cards. That amount comes out of each commissioner’s $200,000 office budget, which includes expenses such as staff and insurance.
Boyer, whose spending problems prompted greater scrutiny of the program, requested the overall audit and greater oversight in an email Thursday to the county’s chief operating officer. In it, she also suggests that the county consider canceling the program altogether.
“I acknowledge I was not spending properly and I’ve been very sloppy with my record-keeping, but because I always spent within my (commission) budget, the only issue that ever came up was my need to do better on receipts,” Boyer said in an exclusive interview Monday with the AJC, referring to a 2011 audit that found those flaws in her reports.
“No one was really looking at any elected officials, so I would welcome more supervision and clarity so no one else is caught making mistakes when they think they are doing it properly,” she added.
The AJC investigation found that Boyer spent more than $16,800 on airline tickets, rental cars, cellphone charges and other travel expenses on her county-issued card. She reimbursed many of the charges within days, but paid back, or pledged to pay back, about $8,000 only after the newspaper began asking questions.
Boyer signed an agreement in 2010 with the county’s purchasing department, which administers the Visas, not to use the P-card for personal purchases and acknowledged that “DeKalb County may terminate my right to use this card at any time for any reason at its sole discretion.”
After the AJC probe, Boyer said she voluntarily stopped using the card assigned to her and her chief of staff. Monday, May said the cards had been shut off.
The administrator of the county program recently told commissioners that none of the county departments that allow the P-cards — ranging from the county-owned DeKalb-Peachtree Airport to the roads department — have experienced any widespread abuse or policy violations.
Those workers have been following the existing rules to file monthly logs of expenses that include receipts.
In turn, every department has a designated P-card representative who is tasked with providing a monthly printout from the bank that shows expenses that need to be reconciled, said administrator Travis Cherry.
Only when the log and receipts match the bank statement are the payments considered appropriate.
May said Monday that the existing agreement would not allow him to revoke Boyer’s card, though she has pledged to stop using it until a new policy is in place.
The solution, according to county attorney O.V. Brantley, was the new policy that designates the P-cards as an administrative program. That gives the CEO’s office power to oversee the commission cards while still allowing the legislative branch overall control of its own budget, May said.
“This is a privilege, not a right, and we are exercising greater control over that privilege starting now,” May said.
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