Editorial: Audit results make argument for clearer rules on credit card purchasing
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Things can be broken and functional at the same time.
It’s not ideal, but it’s true.
Boiled down to its basics, that’s the message of Pittsburgh Controller Rachael Heisler’s report on the audit of use of city purchasing credit cards by the parks department.
The audit was prompted by concerns in May that about $23,000 had been paid to one contractor and former city employee, Mario Ashkar, over the course of a year.
The problem wasn’t that a former employee was a contractor. It wasn’t the amount or the length of time.
It was that the whole situation was contrary to policy for use of purchasing cards. They are intended for things like subscriptions or travel expenses or paying for a business-related lunch. They were never meant to bypass a bill that could or should be paid in a more formal fashion.
In August, Pittsburgh Office of Management and Budget Director Jake Pawlak issued a report of the Office of Municipal Investigations review, saying it was all an honest mistake.
Now Heisler’s audit agrees that while the purchases didn’t follow the rules, there were also no indications of malfeasance.
Does that mean there were no problems? Not at all, and that’s why an investigation is valuable even when it isn’t dramatic.
“We’ve identified several important steps the administration can take to clarify the rules around p-card purchases and help prevent waste, fraud, and abuse,” Heisler said in a statement.
Good.
The rules are there for a reason. They are guardrails to keep the waste, fraud and abuse from happening. When they aren’t followed, that can breed distrust in both the system and the people involved.
That distrust is bad for the administration and bad for the people involved. An audit that finds ways to make the city not only more trustworthy but also appear more trustworthy is an audit with a good outcome.
Transparency is not just about Right to Know Law or Freedom of Information Act requests. Transparency is also government keeping government accountable to itself.