Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Who over-spent the $7,000 allowance in 2021-2022?

In the school year just ended (2021-2022), several board members over-spent their $7,000 allowances for travel and training.

One good question is who approved reimbursing them for the excess, once they had hit their $7,000 limit.

Once they reached the maximum, a good Accounts Payable clerk would have cut them off. 

And maybe that "good A/P clerk" tried. But did someone else approve continued payments? At least two board members got more than $2,000 over the $7,000 limit. And that was for expenses before the end of the school year on June 30.

Where does the buck stop? Apparently, in Richland 2 the bucks don't stop. They just keep on rolling out. The superintendent acknowledged at one board meeting that he should have kept a closer eye on things.

But my question is, why would he even have a hand in the deal? Way down in the bowels of the accounting department, there is a clerk who does the accounting for the trustees' travel money. The limit should have been the LIMIT. But it wasn't. 

That clerk has a supervisor; the supervisor should not have approved the excess. And that supervisor has a department manager. And that manager should not have approved the excess.

I have a FOIA request in for the last two expense reports submitted by Teresa Holmes. I'm curious about the two signatures that over-ruled the A/P clerk.

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