$96k Per year apparently not enough for Mayor

Mandeville mayor got gifts from tots' toy fund by Cindy Chang, The Times-Picayune Saturday March 01, 2008, 10:19 PM With an annual salary of more than $96,000, Mandeville Mayor Eddie Price would hardly seem to require help from a charity at Christmas. Yet in December 2006, the mayor received a $500 Wal-Mart gift card from the Mandeville Police Citizen Service Fund, informally known as Toys for Tots because it distributes Christmas gifts to needy children. Price received another $500 Wal-Mart card from the fund in 2005 and a $300 card in 2003, according to fund records. Gift card lists for 2004 were not available. The fund was also used to buy the mayor a $735 hunting bow, including case and accessories, one year and a gun cabinet another year, though the money for the bow apparently was later reimbursed. Price said in a recent interview that he thought the cards were a holiday present from Police Department employees and had no idea they were paid for by the Citizen Service Fund, which relies mostly on donations from local residents. He said he thought the bow and the gun cabinet were from employees as well. "The issue is, I probably should have asked where it came from, and I did not," Price said. The gift cards were the initial focus of what has become a wide-ranging investigation by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor into the finances of the Mandeville Police Department as well as City Hall after the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a New Orleans watchdog group, filed a complaint with the agency. Price was not the only city employee to receive gift cards courtesy of the Citizen Service Fund. In each of the six years except for 2007 for which the city provided records to The Times-Picayune, the fund was used to purchase Wal-Mart gift cards for as many as 20 Police Department and City Hall employees and once for Police Chief Tom Buell's mother-in-law. Most of the gifts were for $100 or more. And the fund, which is run by Buell, paid for Christmas fruit baskets to be sent each year to a long list of recipients, including Mandeville City Council members and other local officials. It is also used to pay for an annual crawfish boil for city employees and, as recently as 2002, paid for the city's employee Christmas party. Buell is in charge of the Citizen Service Fund, but Price is one of three city officials authorized to approve fund expenditures. Signatures from two of the three are required for a check to be cashed from the fund. Price said he does not remember signing off on his gifts. Metropolitan Crime Commission president Rafael Goyeneche said the fund is "basically operating as a slush fund, with no checks and balances, no oversight." 'It was wrong to do it' In addition to the Toys for Tots program, the Citizen Service Fund helps needy people by paying for emergency hotel rooms and other assistance, such as transportation out of state for cancer treatment. Buell defended the prevalence of police officers and city staff on the gift card lists, saying that many of the employees -- some who make as little as $20,000 to $30,000 a year -- are single parents or have large families. Buell said he paid for the mayor's gifts with money from the Citizen Service Fund because he wanted to spare his employees the financial pain of pitching in. He now regrets that decision, he said. "It was wrong to do it, but at the same time it took pressure off the police officers," Buell said of the mayor's gift cards. "It was wrong to do it, and I readily admit that." Buell also used $735 from the fund to purchase a hunting bow, case and accessories for Price's birthday in 2006 and a gun cabinet for Price's Christmas present another year -- gifts that were intended to be from City Hall and Police Department workers. Buell said he tapped into the fund in order to have cash in hand to purchase the gifts while money was still being collected from employees. The fund was later reimbursed with the employee money for the hunting bow but was apparently never reimbursed for the other gift -- an error he should have rectified at the time, Buell said in a recent interview. Buell said he does not accept large holiday gifts from Police Department employees for himself. The Police Department budget is part of the Mandeville city budget, and police employees are on the city payroll. The police chief is appointed by the mayor with the approval of the City Council, but his employment is subject to the same civil service rules that govern the hiring and firing of police officers. If Price ever removed Buell from his post, Buell could challenge the dismissal before the city's civil service board, just like a rank-and-file officer. Buell was appointed in 1980 by then-Mayor Ray Foil and also served a two-year stint as Mandeville police chief in the 1970s. Price, who had served on the City Council since 1980 before being elected mayor in 1996, is in his fourth and final term because of term limits. Signing the checks The system of City Hall oversight for the Citizen Service Fund, with two of three top officials signing each check, was instituted after a police officer, Clyde Sawyer, embezzled about $2,500 from the fund, then part of the local Fraternal Order of Police, in the early 1990s. In reality, the officials who sign the checks said the process is so routine and they have so much other paperwork to attend to that they sometimes barely glance at the contents. Price and the other two officials, Finance Director Milton Stiebing and Price's assistant, Marlaine Peachey, each said they do not remember signing off on the mayor's gift cards or the two other mayor's gifts. "He literally signs it like this," Peachey said recently in Price's office, folding the top part of a piece of paper and mimicking a signature on the bottom. Aside from the Toys for Tots expenditure sheets that include the gift card lists, the sole copies of other Citizen Service Fund records, including spending outside of the Christmas season, were handed over to the auditors, Buell and other city officials said. Peachey, who ordered the hunting bow and gun cabinet and was in charge of collecting money from employees for the gifts, said she no longer has the receipts but that the hunting bow, case and accessories cost about $735 and the gun cabinet was probably between $200 and $300. Buell wrote the check from the Citizen Service Fund for the hunting bow, and Peachey eventually reimbursed the fund with $150 collected from City Hall employees, she said. But she ended up using the employee money she collected for the gun cabinet on accessories to go with the cabinet, since the cabinet was not being delivered in time for Christmas, she said. She does not know whether Buell used the Citizen Service Fund to pay for that gift or whether he ever reimbursed the fund. Buell said he believes the entire cost of the hunting bow was put back into the fund but that the money for the gun cabinet probably was not. Price acknowledged receiving the two gifts. As with the Wal-Mart cards, he said he believed they were paid for with employee contributions. "If this blows up, I'll pay that money back," Price said he told Stiebing regarding the gift cards. Gift list In 2003, the first year that Price received Wal-Mart gift cards, the Citizen Service Fund spend almost $2,000 on gift cards, out of total Christmas season expenditures of about $10,000. More than half of those cards, with a total face value of nearly $1,400, went to police or City Hall employees. Among those employees were police dispatcher Vicki McCain and finance department accountant Jan Scholvin, who each received $150 cards, and public works employee Ira Roberson, who received $240. Price's $300 gift was the largest anyone received that year. Through Buell, McCain declined to comment on her family's need for financial assistance. Between 2000 and 2006, McCain and her family received a total of at least $710 in Wal-Mart gift cards from the Citizen Service Fund, records show. In 2008, dispatchers were making between $24,400 and $36,400 a year. Over a seven-year period, excluding 2001 and 2004, Scholvin received $610 and Roberson $890 -- the most of any City Hall or police employees except for Price, whose gift card total came to $1,300. Roberson, who cuts grass for the public works department, said he received the gift cards because he was raising two nieces after their mother died. Scholvin said she needed the cards because she was a single mother and hard-up financially. She used the money to buy Christmas presents for her two sons, she said. According to the 2008 city budget, an accountant makes $48,450 a year. Maintenance workers in the public works department make between $21,250 and $35,600, depending on seniority. "There were several times in my life when I needed help, and they helped me through difficult circumstances," Scholvin said. Gift card recipients also included high-ranking police officers who make around $50,000 a year, not including overtime: Lt. Thomas Breazeale, who received $130 in 2000; Lt. Judy Carrier, who received a total of $400 in 2005 and 2006; and then-Sgt. Ron Ruple, who received a total of $200 in 2005 and 2006. Ruple is now a captain. Buell's mother-in-law, Earline LeBlanc, received a $100 gift card in 2002 to help with the expense of looking after her handicapped son. Those who received gift cards and did not work for the city included a single mother who lost her trailer and a woman raising three grandchildren after her son landed in jail, according to Buell. "We saw the need with the police officers and city employees. They were right there in front of us," Buell said. "We knew we were helping the community with the toys and all that, and the police officers didn't feel comfortable standing in line and getting toys for their kids." The Citizen Service Fund was also used to purchase fruit baskets, at between $6 and $20 each, for about 30 people a year, including Price; Mandeville City Council members Denis Bechac, Adelaide Boettner, Coogan, Trilby Lenfant and Zella Walker; Mandeville Civil Service Board members B.K. Baldwin, Jay Conner, Leo Edgerson, Ervin Recer and Merlin Villar; District Attorney Walter Reed; and St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain. Buell received a fruit basket each year, with his parents, David and Verna Buell, each receiving one in 2000 and 2002. The fund dispatches police officers dressed as Santa Clauses to visit nursing homes, schools and community groups, distributing chocolate-covered cherries and collecting donations. The Times-Picayune's St. Tammany bureau was among the locations visited between 2003 and 2006, and the newspaper's Doll and Toy Fund donates hundreds of toys to the program each year. The amount the Citizen Service Fund spent on Wal-Mart gift cards doubled after Hurricane Katrina, going from $1,870 in 2003 to $3,815 in the Christmas 2005 season. The proportion of gift cards awarded to city of Mandeville employees also went up after the storm. In 2005, 20 of the 24 gift cards, with a total face value of more than $2,500, went to city employees. The figures for 2006 were similar -- $3,375 spent on gift cards, most of which went to 20 people employed at either City Hall or the Police Department. In both 2005 and 2006, Price's $500 gift card was by far the largest amount anyone received, with all other grants recorded on the lists between $50 to $250. Few toys purchased Records of expenditures outside of the Christmas season, including the hunting bow and the gun case, were seized by the auditors and the city did not retain copies, officials said. Those officials said they also gave to the auditors all lists of citizen donations and other revenue. Buell estimates that the Citizen Service Fund takes in between $20,000 to $27,000 a year in cash in a typical year, most of which comes from small donations. Annual Christmas expenditures, including the gift cards and fruit baskets, average $10,000, or about half of the money the fund spends each year. According to the records provided by the city, many toys -- about 600 most years -- are donated by The Times-Picayune Doll and Toy Fund. Combined with toy donations from the public, few additional toy purchases are needed in some years to provide multiple toys to the 600 or so children who receive them. In 2005, according to the records, the Citizen Service Fund spent only $114, or 1 percent of its Christmas budget, on toys. The fund did not spend any money on toys in 2006, while gift cards constituted almost 50 percent of expenditures in 2005 and 32 percent in 2006. The fund spends at least $3,000 a year and as much as $6,000 on printing and postage for the solicitation letter sent annually to every Mandeville-area household. The letter lists the fund's other functions besides its Christmas toy giveaway, including emergency help for disaster victims, employee recognition programs and temporary help for citizens going through bad times. But the emphasis is clearly on Toys for Tots: The letter opens and closes with paragraphs about the children's program. "The Mandeville Police Department is sponsoring its 28th Annual Mandeville Toys for Tots Drive," last year's letter begins. In addition to the $10,000 spent during the Christmas season, another $10,000 is typically spent during the rest of the year on the other charitable deeds described in the letter, Buell said. Local residents or travelers who could not afford a place to stay were formerly lodged at the Ozone Motel in old Mandeville using Citizen Service Fund money, but the Police Department now relies on a patchwork of local hotels to keep them off the streets. In the employee recognition category is the annual crawfish boil for City Hall and Police Department employees, which costs the fund about $2,000. In 2002, records show, more than $2,500 from the fund was used for a staff Christmas party. Buell said the fund also paid for the Christmas party in some years prior to 2002 but that the city no longer holds the party. Critics of the Police Department said the solicitation letter amounts to false advertising. Some people likely would not have donated to the fund if they knew the money was being used not for toys but to finance city employees' shopping lists at Wal-Mart, they said. "If it's the public employee fund and not the Toys for Tots fund, maybe the public would be told that most of their donations will be used for public employee gifts. If the public chooses to donate to that, then fine. But that's not the way it's being presented," Goyeneche said. Series of allegations With the state audit, the Mandeville Police Department is again being scrutinized for relationships with City Hall that critics of the department allege are too cozy. A year ago, the Louisiana Board of Ethics said that City Councilman Jerry Coogan violated state ethics rules when he commandeered a police car to visit his family in Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Last month in the aggravated battery trial of SpeeDee Oil Change co-owner Gary Copp, Price rebutted allegations that he intervened with police officers to have Copp booked on a lesser charge. Copp initially was booked with a misdemeanor, but the charge was later upgraded to aggravated battery, a felony Copp was convicted of Feb. 2. Price admitted calling the police station on Copp's behalf but not to discuss the severity of the charge. He said he merely wanted to make sure Copp was released without having to post a bond. "Look at the Copp case, the Coogan car, where you have politicians using the Police Department as some type of political tool," Goyeneche said. "These are all symptoms of a system that is begging for accountability." Questions about the Toys for Tots fund has drawn two full-time investigators from the legislative auditor's compliance division, who have been working in Mandeville since October and recently expanded the scope of its inquiry, said Dan Daigle, the division's director. The compliance division looks into allegations of fraud or abuse involving government entities. Daigle would not confirm the subject matter of the investigation, but according to Mandeville officials, it initially focused on the Citizen Service Fund and later evolved into other aspects of city finances. "They're looking into everything," Price said. The auditor's office does not always issue a report following an investigation but is likely to do so at the conclusion of its work in Mandeville, Daigle said. Changes to the fund The audit, though not yet complete, has already prompted some changes in the Citizen Service Fund. Buell did not distribute any gift cards during the 2007 Christmas season. Fruit baskets last year went to only 10 individuals and organizations, none of whom were elected or appointed officials. And because of concerns raised by the auditors about the fund's administrative structure, Buell has initiated the process of converting it into a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity. Richard Greenland, a Covington lawyer who is setting up the new nonprofit, to be called the Greater Mandeville Police Foundation Inc., would not comment on whether there are legal problems with the way the fund currently operates. Because it is not part of the city budget and does not have legal nonprofit status, the fund has not been subject to yearly audits. The new nonprofit will have a nine-member board of directors and will be audited annually by an independent accountant. Shelby LaSalle, chairman and CEO of the engineering consulting firm Krebs, LaSalle, LeMieux who is also a reserve police officer, will be the board president. Buell will be a board member, as will two police officers, Breazeale and Sgt. Gerald Sticker. Other members include developer John Crosby, former Causeway Commissioner Ron Goux and former parish councilwoman Pat Brister. "It'll have more structure and be more legally organized so that it should function a lot smoother and more businesslike. Not that it wasn't operating in a businesslike fashion before," Greenland said. Price and Buell said they will be happy to make any other changes recommended by the auditor's report. "I'm looking forward to the recommendations. If they tell us we're doing things wrong, we're going to make adjustments," Price said. Buell said he fears that the good work performed by the fund over the years may be overshadowed by his decision to draw on citizen donations to purchase gifts for the mayor. "Helping to put people up, sending them to M.D. Anderson for treatment, those are good things," Buell said. "The mayor's gift at Christmas is probably a bad thing. I'm going to come out looking bad." Cindy Chang can be reached at cchang@timespicayune.com or (985) 898-4816.

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