1 fired for $40,000 spree

1 fired for $40,000 spree
Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 5:45 am by Peter Guinta

Eight employees with St. Johns County’s Family Integrity Program will face — or have faced — disciplinary action after they went on a $40,000 buying spree June 29 and June 30 that administrators say violated county guidelines.

County Administrator Michael Wanchick said Wednesday that the acting clinic director knew about the purchases and even signed off on a few.

“He should have known better,” Wanchick said.

The acting director was fired this week.

Also, the department’s chief financial officer and one case manager resigned. Five others face less severe discipline, though none of them are in danger of being fired.

“They all displayed a blatant disregard for county purchasing procedures, coupled with poor personal judgment,” Wanchick said. “This type of activity is not something we’ll tolerate.”

Director of Administrative Affairs Stacey Stanish said a Family Integrity employee called July 1 and told administrators about the questionable purchases.

“We immediately contacted the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office and our internal fraud, waste and abuse investigator,” Stanish said. “The Sheriff’s Office said no laws were broken. And our investigator found no fraud but did find waste and abuse of county policies.”

All the employees involved were placed on paid leave when the investigation began.

Over the following weeks, administrators questioned the eight, examined receipts and returned items to merchants for a refund.

Stanish said, “Of $18,000 in unreasonable purchases, we got $14,000 back. The merchants were easy to work with.”

Family Integrity is a state-funded unit handling the licensing and education of foster care parents as well as adoption and foster care placement. The unit has earned many state awards for innovation and excellence, one earlier this year.

Stanish has been given the responsibility for day-to-day decisions.

“These were good people with good intentions,” she said about the disciplined employees. “Our concern was how they went about purchasing those things.”

Wanchick said program money is sometimes left over at the end of the year. Staffers can use that surplus to buy “reasonable or necessary” items for their offices, he said.

The eight employees bought desks, chairs, DVD players and televisions, and items for foster children such as clothing, shoes and toiletries. But they also bought 99 DVDs, several iPods, a camera and music compact discs.

Wanchick said he was disappointed this incident occurred.

“One or two DVDs might be considered reasonable and necessary. Certainly not 99. Those items are not even in the gray area. In this (economic) environment, that’s extremely egregious.”

All the employees would be treated fairly, he said.

“Lives and careers are at stake here,” he said. “Things like this happen in any organization.

“I think we should be judged on the way we reacted. Once we were aware, we took swift action. This cannot be tolerated, or we’ll be talking about a lot more money someday.”