Senate staff solicited lobbyists, audit report says

By Andrew Guevara
For the Show-Me Institute

In a recent audit of the state Senate, state auditor Susan Montee found that Senate staff solicited lobbyists for gifts, didn’t follow a competitive bidding process for certain contracts, and often were not required to keep records of time worked.

The audit reports that senators and Senate officials solicited donations used to pay for Christmas parties, gift cards for Senate staff, and retirement and gifts for outgoing senators. These donations were deposited into a private account outside the jurisdiction of the state Treasury. This practice has been in place for more than five years, according to the audit report.

The Senate Administrator’s Fund bank account was established in December 2003 to receive donations from lobbyists for use in buying food and beverages for senators and Senate staff when working late during the legislative session, and for annual staff Christmas parties. Since the creation of the fund on June 30, 2008, donations totaling $76,070 have been deposited into the account and a total of $60,945 has been spent.

“We could locate no statutory or other authority for Senate officials to open a bank account outside the state treasury,” the state audit report said.

According to the audit, the Missouri Ethics Commission accepted the establishment of the fund with the stipulation that all donations would be reported on the lobbyists’ monthly expenditure reports; however,  many of the donations were not so reported. Between April and August 2008, at least nine donations, totaling $8,035, were not properly reported by the lobbyists on their monthly expenditure reports filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission.

In addition to its criticism of lobbyist solicitations, the report observed that neither support staff employees nor their supervisors were required to sign time sheets. Even the personnel staff of some senators were not required to maintain detailed records of their work hours. The responsibility for that record keeping falls squarely on each senator, because senators have the discretion to decide how their personnel staff records work time.

Another major area of criticism in the report was that the Senate did not always comply with competitive bidding processes. Proper documentation was not kept for the bidding on $9,775 worth of digital recording hardware and software system, $21,707 worth of computers and related equipment, and $13,202 for legal services provided for a Senate committee.

The state auditor expressed concern about the Senate’s reliance on computerized systems, including databases that contain information about pending legislation, voters and constituents, assets, and employee records, and pointed out that no backup system for this data exists. If a disaster were to occur, the report noted, all records would be lost.

Andrew Guevara is an intern at the Show-Me Institute.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 26th, 2009 at 6:00 am. Both comments and pings are currently closed.