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Associated PressIt paid Pat Tornillo's personal expenses from luxury hotel stays, the Miami Herald reported.
MIAMI - The teachers union for the country's fourth-largest school district paid more than $350,000 for luxury hotel stays and other opulent expenses for its longtime leader, a newspaper reported.
Pat Tornillo has spent the past four decades leading the United Teachers of Dade, the Southeast's largest labor union, which represents nearly 28,000 teachers and support-staff members. He is taking a leave of absence pending the outcome of a corruption task force's investigation of the union.
A financial consultant for the union confirmed that Tornillo was reimbursed for more than $20,000 for an eight-night stay at the Miami Mandarin Oriental hotel - which is 300 yards from Tornillo's own rental apartment, the Miami Herald reported in Sunday editions.
"I went ballistic when I saw that Mandarin bill," David J. Albaum, the union's in-house financial consultant, who reviewed the union's credit card statements, told the newspaper. Many of the expenses came during a time when teachers were fighting for raises, facing pay cuts or trying to avoid layoffs. They included a 2000 trip to California, Australia and New Zealand during which Tornillo and his wife purchased jewelry and clothing.
The total costs paid by the union on the three-week trip were $49,715 - equivalent to the annual salary of a schoolteacher with 15 years of experience.
Overall, the Herald reviewed about $444,000 in credit-card expenses, with $350,000 in corresponding checks from the union to reimburse Tornillo.
Tornillo's attorney, Robert Josefsberg, did not return a message Sunday seeking comment. Tornillo, 77, earns $243,000 a year in salary and benefits, including a $42,700 stipend that is supposed to cover his business expenses, said James Angleton Jr., the union's chief financial officer.
Albaum and Angleton have become government witnesses in the investigation of Tornillo.