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10/16/2009

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Hoppy's Commentary for Friday

Talkline Host Hoppy Kercheval

West Virginia taxpayers are being taken for a ride by some state employees. A report by the state legislative auditor’s office reveals that the state government motor pool is out of control.

The audit found that a number of state employees are using state vehicles for “less than 50 percent business purposes,” meaning most of the miles they put on their state cars at taxpayer expense are for their personal use.

Importantly, many state workers are keeping bad records or no records at all of their personal miles and business miles in a state vehicle. That’s critical for tax purposes. The use of a state car is a fringe benefit and subject to taxes by the IRS.

Notably, State Agriculture Commissioner Gus Douglas and State Treasurer John Perdue are among those who didn’t even bother to report the value of their use of state vehicles for tax purposes.

The Internal Revenue Service should find those omissions interesting.

Legislative auditor Aaron Allred says Perdue has told him he’s going to immediately write a check for the amount due. Good for him, but as the state’s top financial officer, Perdue should have known better.

Douglas claimed in a letter to the auditor that his use of a state vehicle for personal miles is exempt because he’s a law enforcement official. Apparently Douglas is serious. If the IRS buys that argument we should all take more liberties with our taxes.

Sadly, this has been allowed to happen because the state doesn’t really know what’s going on with its motor pool. “How can the state appropriately manage its fleet of automobiles and trucks if it doesn’t know how many automobiles and trucks it has?” Allred asked.

Great question.

And here’s another one while we’re at it. Does it make sense for a state that’s trying hard to watch its dollars to provide vehicles to state workers to commute between home and their workplace?

Allred says the state spent $24 million last year just in gasoline! Remember, the state—that is the taxpayer—absorbs the cost of the vehicles, the gas, the insurance and the maintenance. Allred says we’re talking $60 million to $70 million a year just to operate the state fleet.

The Manchin Administration and/or the Legislature need to fix this.

First, the state should take a complete inventory of all state vehicles.

Second, the state should require absolute and accurate record keeping so we know how many miles are for personal use and how many are for state business, and then report that information accurately to the IRS.

Third, the Legislature and the Administration should have a public policy debate about how the state fleet should be used. If they’re serious, they’ll find ways to trim the fleet.

This legislative audit confirms what many West Virginians have suspected for years—the use of the state vehicle fleet is way out of line. Now that the scandal has finally been documented, there’s no reason for the Administration and the Legislature not to fix it.

User Comments

Hoppy, I work for thw West Virginia Division of Forestry and I can gaurantee you that our fleet is not abused! We are not allowed to use our vehicles for personal use! I can not believe that there are state employees that are allowed to use vehicles for personal use. Also, any sane person would have traded my state vehicle in for a new one last year. I have 95,000 miles on my truck and it is in the shop every week for a new problem. Just two weeks ago my brakes went out on Corridor H, thanks to my driving skills I was able to keep from being killed. I think the real scandal is the state running vehicles past the point of serviceability, that is when the tax payer gets ripped.

Doctor Doom, you are so spot on. Say, Doom, do you think if we were state employees we could get a junky clunker Mercedes to go up to NYC for a hot date, too? I hear NYC is really just too much on a Friday evening.

Hoppy,

Bomb and Doom are correct. I have donated two or three vehicles to charity that are better than the average state employee is forced to drive.

Many VIPs, agency heads, and elected office holders like Purdue, Douglas and many others are regularly provided nice new, big, comfortable cars that use lots of gasoline. Some undoubtedly abuse the system. A few even get the use of state owned airplanes as perks. Don't forget that some VIPs including certain WVU officials are just TOO important to drive. I imagine you have a pretty good idea of the identity of many of these VIPs, if you think about it. The elected officials should pay at the ballot box, but they won't given West Virginia's corrupt politics.

No one will bother to document the high level abuses. All the current episode of this recurring motor pool witch hunt will do is make the jobs of the average, poorly paid state employees, who don't abuse the system, harder. That's what happened the last time the legislature commissioned a motor pool witch hunt. As I recall this recurs about once every ten years or so and ultimately doesn't fix anything.

... Oh, in response to Rakman. To temporarily disable any GPS device simply tape layers of foil or a small metal dish over the patch antenna. Most antennas are less than a couple of inches square and are easy to spot. A fairly heavy metal dish or several layers of thick foil will even confuse those with new high sensitivity antennas. Before you get a back to the motor pool remove the covering. If asked simply shrug your shoulders and walk away. This doesn't really disable the GPS in any way. The GPS just can't figure out where it is while the antenna is covered. Also, most tracking doesn't work away from the cellular telephone networks (like most of West Virginia away from the interstates).

Mr. S. Bomb has this right. Let us not criticize state employees who drive these poor performing, barely functioning state cars. Would you actually put yourself in one of those junky clunkers? Give those state employees a break, whether it's the lowly street cleaner who takes a state Ford Pinto home to do his shopping at Macy's that evening or a big time chief honcho who takes his state Mercedes home to go off on a hot date in NYC that evening, they're all driving crap that no normal person would set foot in. This is not rocket science, people. Just be glad that you don't have to drive a state 1970 Ford Pinto home and be so ashamed when your kids would see you driving that tin can.

Hops, let's be real about this. Those state vehicles generally have lots of blown pistons. With a blown piston can come a blown radiator. With a blown radiator can come a blown rack. With a blown rack can come a blown fuse. Do you see where I'm coming from on this? Those state employees are driving around on a bucket of bolts. Would you want to be driving around on something like that? Rather than criticizing state employees for driving these wrecks home where they can go out to the drive-in theater and eat hot dogs and drinking their horse quarts in such a a pitiful piece of vehicular garbage, we should be saying, "Gosh, you guys sure are determined to save yourself a few bucks by driving these pieces of junk. You are to be admired rather than castigated." And there you go.

this not only goes on at the state level it goes on at the countys levels the logan banner had a big article awhile back on this very same thing i go to gas pumps and the high prices while the state and county officals pull up yo a state garage or state pump n filler her uo at the tax payers expence while the officals drives to wal mart ot just out for sunday drive n to ball games taking their children to school

$24 million on gas? I'm not at all surprised. State employee abuse of state vehicles is certainly an issue that deserves constant scrutiny, but that is not the only problem.

One of my projects when I worked for the state was to try to incorporate energy saving practices into my agency(DEP). It took three governors and an incredible amount of effort to get a single hybrid vehicle added to the motor pool on an 'experimental' basis. To the best of my knowledge it's still the only energy efficient vehicle in the entire state motor pool. How often do we see state issue SUV's and 4wd vehicles with a single occupant cruising up the interstate?

By the same token it took then cabinet secretary Mike Callaghan's incredible tenacity to include energy efficient features in the new DEP building, features that have I'm sure already paid for themselves in savings.

The problem is that the state purchasing department does NOT include operating expenses in purchase decisions. Bids on vehicles, buildings, and I'm sure many other items are based on purchase cost only, not how long they will last or how much additional costs will be incurred during their use.

We could and should calculate anticipated TOTAL costs associated with purchases, but we don't, and as a result, it costs us all.

Back to your original focus, at least during my tenure at DEP, state vehicle use was pretty tightly monitored. Only field inspectors were issued vehicles for regular use. The rest of us could only take a state vehicle home if we were leaving straight from home to a work related function the next morning. Personally, unless I was carpooling with other state workers, I always drove my own vehicle so I could feel comfortable adding personal miles if desired to my travels, collecting mileage as appropriate for the work-related portion of my trips.

But I fully support continual scrutiny of how efficiently our tax dollars are spent. There's no question there is always room for improvement.

Well, now, this is what the press ought to be doing. Watching out for the welfare of the taxpayers. This ought to be done on a daily basis. Beats talking about football. The state is not the taxpayers according to my insight. The taxpayers are forced to support the state. That is my understanding. That's a good reason for the press to constantly be questioning what government is doing. At every level of government. No special unit of state government ought to get the opportunity to use the taxpayers vehicles (state owned vehicles) for their personal use. All government employees are the employees of the citizens and the taxpayers. Government ought properly to be held accountable to the taxpayers here in West Virginia and throughout the nation. This is an important article that you have put out Mr. Kercheval. Beats talking about football. We cannot afford to be distracted by circuses at a time like this.

I would hope that someone, anyone with any authority in this government would be so embarrassed and outraged by this report that they would work to resolve this. I realize that you are never going to fully control all costs and prevent fraud in either the public or private sectors. I wonder what controls are in place now, if any, which are obviously not working? It makes you wonder how credit card, purchasing, employee expense reimbursements, etc. are handled. Government is great at enacting legislation to control the populace, but not so great at controlling their own.

Hoppy, time for West Virginia to get technical.

Put a stealth GPS device in every state vehicle. Its been done in other states. These devices are not accessable by the vehicle occupants, and if located and tampered with, the vehicle becomes disabled. State agencies will know where every fleet vehicle is physically at any moment in time 24/7. There are 3rd Party service providers that track these GPS transponders for city, state agencies that have them installed in transportation, public works, police and fire emergency vehicles.

Imagine if you found out 10% of your fleet traveled less than 20,000 miles per year.

Yes, you can require state vehicle operators to keep accurate records. Will they?

Hoppy, my reaction to this story can be summed up with two statements:

"This is an outrage!"

"Why am I not surprised?"

The bottom line is, whether one works for the government or the private sector, employees will generally take advantage of ANY vehicle/mileage/reinbursement rules. It's like all those "Farm Use" vehicles you see on the interstate or ATV's driven HUNDREDS of miles from home. Yes Hoppy, the state MUST crack down on these abuses, to the extent that they can. Why is anyone shocked that even our top bureaucrats in the state are among those taking advantage of the current system? Yet another example of why few people trust our governing bodies.

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