From the City of Los Angeles comes yet another example of the waste and/or fraud that occurs in a government bureaucracy. Los Angeles spent $12 million on a system to track the use of taxpayer-funded gasoline. And now an audit shows that $7 million in gas has “gone missing,” according to the LA Times. It seems the control system is being bypassed, which means LA taxpayers may well be paying for cheats to fill up their personal cars at taxpayer expense. Shameful.
The tools to bypass the tracking system are supposed to be used only when normal systems fail. But auditors found they were used to dispense millions of gallons of fuel over a 22-month period beginning in 2009.
Master cards were swiped 56,000 times to pump $2-million worth of fuel, the audit found, and another $1.2 million in fuel was pumped using the manual bypass. In most cases, there was no paper trail showing why the backup was used and for which vehicle.
At 22 Los Angeles Police Department fueling sites, an override button meant for emergencies was used to pump $3.9 million in gas.
