Mandeville City Council making waves

As storms continue to pound Mandeville and the surrounding areas, the City Council is continuing its own relentless assault on several of the city’s tattered policies.

At Thursday night’s council meeting, three policies were unanimously passed that will, for the first time in Mandeville’s history, govern employee travel and city-issued credit card use and require an annual independent internal audit of all city expenses.

The policies come in the wake of an audit conducted by the Louisiana State Legislative Auditor’s office on the internal workings of the city.

The audit found numerous examples of unscrupulous dealings involving Mayor Eddie Price, Finance Director Milton Stiebing and other city officials, where taxpayer money may have been used for personal expenses, including out of state travel.

The audit also claims Price and Stiebing racked up thousands of dollars in meal purchases on their city-issued credit cards without providing proper documentation for the charges.

To prevent any possible further misuse, Stiebing accepted the auditor’s suggestion and developed a credit card policy that was presented to the council several weeks ago.

The council made significant changes to the document before adopting it Thursday.

According to the policy, credit and purchasing cards issued to employees and other city or elected officials can only be used for conducting city business. Documentation detailing transactions must be submitted to the finance department and City Council, which will deem the charges relevant. In the event the council and finance department consider charges incurred to be extraneous, the user will be forced to reimburse the city whether by personal account or docked from the employee’s pay.

The lack of a travel policy led to the misuse of city-issued vehicles and Fuelman cards, the audit alleged.

To compensate this, the council adopted the state’s travel policy and tailored it to fit Mandeville.

The 14-page policy states, among other things, “all in-state travel for which expenses beyond mileage and meals will be incurred must be authorized and approved in writing by the head of the department, board or commission from whose funds the traveler is paid.”

Out of state travel must be authorized by resolution through the City Council, according to the policy.

Departments will be given an allowance for travel expenses with the finance department providing detailed reports of all expenses to the City Council on a quarterly basis.

“Use of public resources or falsifying expense reports in violation of this policy shall result in a demand for restitution to the city and loss of reimbursement privileges,” it states.

The third policy passed is an ordinance proposed by Mayor Pro Tem Trilby Lenfant that requires an independent internal audit performed on the city each year to determine the “adequacy of internal controls, determine compliance with applicable laws, regulations and contracts, assess whether city assets are adequately safeguarded, and to assist city officials in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government operations and activities in order to maintain the general public’s trust and confidence that city resources are being used effectively and efficiently.”

The city currently has an annual financial audit performed but, according to Lenfant, “it is not designed to detect such deficiencies in internal controls to a degree acceptable to the City Council.”

Overseeing the progress of the audit will be a seven-person committee comprised of two council members and five citizens with backgrounds in finance or accounting. The citizens will be appointed by the council and will have the responsibility of “reporting the internal audit work progress to the City Council on a quarterly basis.”

Lenfant said the committee will be reformed at the beginning of each fiscal year.