Related story: A culture of ‘not following policies’
Department heads docked pay
By Jane Smith
Three Delray Beach department heads lost a day’s pay for their role in the purchasing abuses uncovered by an outside investigator, the city manager told commissioners on Aug. 11.
The department heads are Fire Chief Danielle Connor, Police Chief Jeff Goldman and Chief Financial Officer Jack Warner.
“Ignorance or failing to follow procedures or following custom and practice that are improper ‘because it has always been done this way’ are not acceptable and reflect a culture that is not acceptable,” City Manager Don Cooper wrote in his report.
The department heads should have known about the city’s policy and procedures for purchasing and not have relied on information from staffers, the report said.
The investigation began in May when an outside auditor compared employee contact information with vendor contact information.
Cooper told commissioners that the investigation found a systemic culture of “not following policies and a level of not understanding, which I characterize as ignorance.” He said abuses were not done maliciously but from “past practices that developed, but shouldn’t have.”
The practices began about seven years ago when purchasing was decentralized and allowed departments to interpret state regulations and local policies on their own. Florida law and county code of ethics state that no employees should enter a contract to deliver goods and services to their municipality.
Under the county’s code, that can be waived if the business is awarded under a sealed competitive bid to the lowest bidder and the employee was not involved in writing the bid specifications or selecting the winning bid, did not use influence to gain the contract and filed a statement with the Supervisor of Elections and the Commission on Ethics disclosing interest in the business submitting the bid.
According to the report, these employees will receive reprimands: Desiree Lancaster, EMS billing supervisor; Steven Swanson, police officer; Todd Lynch, paramedic captain; Dot Blast, human resources administrator; and Jacquelyn Ulysse, recovery and collections specialist.
Lancaster, Lynch and Swanson said their spouses had completed the city’s purchasing vendor application and checked off that the business was owned or partially owned by an employee.
This could not be verified because Purchasing Manager Patsy Nadal did not keep the forms.
State law requires keeping them for three financial years. Nadal retired on June 29 after 15 years and before the investigation was complete.
Neither Blast nor her husband could remember filling out the application. Ulysse was added to the state registration of The Rib Man on Aug. 22, 2012. The only invoice processed after that date was for $300, under the ethics threshold. But she should have notified Human Resources when she was placed on the state registration for the Rib Man, according to the report.
Three other employees — paramedics Joseph Lang and Conor Devery and paramedic captain Fredrick McAlley — own vendor businesses, according to the report. They said they filled out the vendor application, but that could not be verified because the purchasing manager destroyed the forms.
Connor questioned the relationship with Lancaster’s company, but she was told it was fine because the business was an approved vendor, the report said.
In the spring, the city manager reorganized the departments and now has the purchasing department under his supervision. Holly Vath is the department head.
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