March 30, 2010
-
Florida County Officials Spar Over Credit Card Spending, Pt.3
Taking responsibility means taking time.While the supervisors of most county departments were able to get their employees' credit card statements submitted on time, the Fire Department remained consistently delinquent. County records indicate that the department was late submitting credit card statements for October, November, and December. Chief Nickerson justified the problem by saying a new purchasing program and short staffing caused the delay. He also blamed the short staffing on county mandated days off. However, other departments operate under the same conditions as the Fire Department. Nickerson couldn't explain why his department had difficulty getting its credit card statements submitted on time while other departments didn't. He noted that what's important is that the department was caught up. Some wonder for how long. Nickerson says he will do whatever is necessary to assure it will not happen again.
The Fire Department has put some new policies and procedures in place to assure all credit card statements are processed in a timely fashion and to assure all employee spending is appropriate. The department has added safeguards to assure firefighters are pumping gas into county vehicles only and not their own personal vehicles when using county credit cards. Nickerson said he has the capabilities of checking in with the dispatch center to verify the firefighter was on duty and scheduled to pump gas at the stated time. Any firefighter breaking the rules would be fired noted Nickerson.
Hernando Today's look into the credit card situation might have put some individuals on the edge; however Chief Nickerson said he was glad the paper probed into the county's card policies. In the Chief's own words, "it provides an extra level of security." Karen Nicolai believes that a better job can be done in managing the county's cards. She said it might mean a little "tweaking of existing" guidelines. One possibility could be reducing the number of cards, review the current system, and looking for ways to improve on existing methods.