Monday, July 22, 1996

Lawmakers threaten COGs with loss of funding

By STEVE RAY and JOEL SHULER
Harte-Hanks Austin Bureau

AUSTIN - Angry lawmakers are threatening to cut off funds to Councils of Government that refuse to provide information requested by legislators in an ongoing probe of alleged misuse of taxpayer money.

One council has not sent information requested by lawmakers, others have provided incomplete travel vouchers and credit card receipts.

And some council of government officials are complaining that getting additional information asked for by lawmakers costs too much money and takes too much time.

"I think it's real important that we send a message that this kind of behavior is not acceptable," said Alpine state Rep. Pete Gallego, who sits on the House Appropriations subcommittee investigating the COGs. "There are different kinds of money I would be willing to look at shutting off."

Texas lawmakers have called for more state oversight of 24 Councils of Government during hearings that began Thursday on allegations of questionable travel expenses and possible misuse of funds.

Legislators said they hoped to see new laws that would standardize regulations governing the councils which control millions of local, state and federal dollars for projects ranging from senior citizen programs to job training and 9-1-1 services.

But some committee members were irate after learning that some of the councils had provided no or incomplete information to committee staff.

"If they don't respond to our requests for how tax dollars are being spent, we should use every option available to us to make sure they comply," said state Rep. Richard Raymond, a Benavides Democrat. "The bottom line is that ... these COGs are a clear example that there is still room for more efficiency in government. Some of these expenses are absolutely unjustifiable."

The Texoma COG in Sherman hadn't submitted travel and credit card records as of Friday afternoon, said Janis Carter, clerk of the Appropriations Committee.

And the Brazos Valley council neglected to include credit card receipts. Thursday, Carter said Brazos Valley officials promised to fax the missing credit card records by Friday.

Texoma administrators, on the other hand, have said their travel and credit card records "might" be ready by the end of July.

Another problem for staffers is the way some of the COGs compiled the requested information. Many of the travel logs don't include dates for the various trips, making it difficult to compare credit card charges with the travel log.

Travel logs submitted by the Heart of Texas COG in Waco, for example, are composed of photocopied travel vouchers submitted by individual board and staff members for every trip taken in fiscal year 1995.

The result is a pile of documents not organized by trip, date or traveler, which has made it almost impossible for committee staff to figure out how many people traveled and how much each trip actually cost.

Another council, the North Central Texas COG in Dallas, included a travel log that lacks dates for trips, contains duplicated log pages and omits several large hotel, meal and airline charges included in credit card records.

Carter said committee staffers and Legislative Budget Board staffers will spend next week combing through documents submitted by each COG to determine what's missing.

"We'll be going through the credit card records trying to verify them with the travel logs, and if there are charges there that aren't on the travel log, we'll be asking those specific questions in letters to the COG," Carter said.

If those questions aren't answered, some lawmakers are ready to take action. Gallego said the problem in cutting off funds to some COGs was making sure money meant to provide services still gets to those people who need it.

"We would have to find a way to get money back to the community," he said.
Other committee members hope that won't be necessary.

"I have every confidence that the COGs are going to be totally forthcoming with the information," said state Rep. Dianne White Delisi, R-Temple. "A few of the COGs have already been. Some may now have a better picture of what we are looking for. (But they need to understand) we're a committee that's just adamant about accountability of tax dollars."

Problems in the state's councils of governments were first discovered in the Concho Valley Council of Governments when a routine investigation of travel expenses by the San Angelo Standard-Times uncovered thousands of dollars spent on out-of-region trips, including annual retreats to a Horseshoe Bay resort and double dipping by receiving $30 daily travel per diems while at the same time dining at expensive restaurants using council credit cards.

That caused San Angelo state Rep. Rob Junell, who heads the Appropriations Committee, to call for a statewide probe of council of government spending.

Since then the Standard-Times and Harte-Hanks Newspapers have found other problems spread across the state that ranged from hundreds of taxpayer dollars spent at topless bars to expense-paid trips for spouses and leases of expensive cars.

"I just don't want to do business (with a group that's) not interested in accountability or efficiency, especially where taxpayer funds are concerned," Gallego said. "The difficulty is there are good COGs and bad COGS. We just need some leverage against the bad ones."