Northpinellas: County pays for some personal cell calls

The demands of her job keep interim Pinellas County Administrator Gay Lancaster so busy that she often finds she has to use her cell phone to check on her sick mother and her young grandson and to make personal appointments.

So maybe it's not surprising that a county audit showed Lancaster made more personal calls from her county cell phone than the other 60 employees surveyed.

But Lancaster repaid the county for every call. The audit, released last week, says that 60 percent of the same group of employees didn't.

It also found some reimbursements made months, and in one case years, after the bills were due. The county spent $10,000 to upgrade employees' phones to newer, often smaller models, had different policies from department to department on what is a personal call and spends as much as $33,000 extra a year because some employees are on bad rate plans, the audit says.

"Pretty much the whole ball of wax needs to be reformed," said Bob Melton, the county's internal audit director. "There could be significant county dollars being wasted."

The county should disallow personal calls, make its policies more uniform and look at whether bidding out a countywide cell phone contract could save money, Melton said.

A more uniform policy is especially important with cell phone use rising so fast, he said. In October 1998, there were 181 county cell phones. Now, there are 469.

County cell phone spending increased almost $60,000 from fiscal 1999 to fiscal 2000, going from $177,615 to $237,510.

But Lancaster said employees should be allowed to make personal calls. Some employees have been disciplined for not repaying such calls, she said, but the county must be stricter about everyone repaying their calls, and paying promptly.

"Our procedures are going to be tighter, and we appreciate the clerk calling it to our attention," she said.

Lancaster and Steve Carroll, assistant county administrator, also said that the county hasn't tried to negotiate with one provider because companies change rates so often.

"If the pricing starts to stabilize, it's something we can look at," Carroll said.

The audit was delivered to commissioners the same week that commissioners passed their final budget for next year after struggling to find ways to save money to shrink a property tax rate increase. Commissioners Karen Seel and Barbara Sheen Todd said the county needs to spend the next year looking for ways to operate more efficiently.

"The budget pinpoints the need for watching out for every cost," Seel said. "This is one where we need to make absolutely sure that if it's used for personal calls . . . it needs to be reimbursed."

Welch said he sees no problem with county workers making personal calls if they're reimbursed. He said Lancaster has no personal time to make such calls.

"Gay works more hours than most regular people," he said. "She's always here."

County records show that Seel, chairman Calvin Harris, and Commissioners Robert Stewart, Ken Welch and Susan Latvala all have county cell phones. Seel, Harris and Stewart have made regular repayments. Welch and Latvala have plans under which they pay a base rate and then get so many free minutes of call time that neither has been charged for any individual calls.

Lancaster also makes regular payments. She said that's probably why her personal bill was so large -- $487 out of $1,405 worth of calls over several months. If she can't remember a phone number when she looks at her bill, she just marks it personal, she said.

"I try to be ultra-careful about it," Lancaster said. "It doesn't make any sense, me carrying around two phones."

She even planned to count her cell phone call to a reporter Friday to talk about her cell phone use as a personal call, said Lancaster, who was on vacation in Michigan.

But other county employees haven't been so diligent.

County auditors didn't try to tally all the personal calls for the 60 surveyed workers. But spot checks found many unreimbursed calls that seemed personal: calls to home, banks, car shops and grocery stores. One call was made to the Varsity Club All-American Sports Cafe and another to the Hunter's Green Country Club.

The audit also found that a utilities worker ran up $435 worth of personal calls and was repaying $50 a month because he couldn't afford to pay more. And Tim Neubert, a former county business development manager, wrote a $411 check in April 2000 to cover calls during a two-year period.

Neubert said he wrote the check because the economic development department's policy had been that calls home while traveling didn't have to be reimbursed. After a disagreement over an unrelated issue, Neubert said, his supervisor told him to check all his phone records and repay such calls. Neubert was never reprimanded and received several outstanding evaluations.

"There was not a common practice for reimbursing personal calls relating to travel," he said.

But Melton said late repayments could violate the state Constitution.

"You can't use the county's credit," he said.

Melton said that even if a worker gets free minutes, personal calls could push county calls into exceeding the limit, so that the county is charged a high rate. Or, he said, a worker could try to avoid using the phone for business so that the phone would have enough free minutes to make personal calls without charge.

"It can be a very useful tool," Melton said. "But you have to have the proper controls."

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