The purchases on the town’s credit card include $81 on Amazon for a Bluetooth loudspeaker, almost $100 at a Hollywood waterfront restaurant to test the menu in advance of a Christmas party and nearly $1,900 on a United Airlines flight to Nevada for a mayor’s conference.
But rather than pointing at the town commissioner who racked up the purchases, Broward’s Inspector General, the county government watchdog tasked to snuff out ethics violations, said the town of Pembroke Park was at fault since it had “inadequate guidance regulating” the purchase cards, known as P-cards, and travel expenditures.
“Because the town had no standard to which we could hold the commissioner accountable, the allegation of misconduct was unsubstantiated,” Broward Inspector General Carol Breece said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “However, such a situation cannot continue.”
She warned that her memo was “to impress upon the town the seriousness of its deficiencies and the risks to which it is exposing itself by continuing to permit officials and employees to use p-cards without proper controls and oversight. We hereby notice the town that, should it continue to tolerate unchecked p-card use, these risks can include the OIG in the near future undertaking an investigation into whether town commission and management members engaged in gross mismanagement and whether individual p-card users engaged in misconduct such as corrupt misuse of position, theft, or violation of the state’s per diem and travel expenses law.”
“The town’s officials and employees can no longer claim ignorance of the situation,” she wrote.
She wrote that her office would follow-up in 60 days “to determine what the town has done to address the observations we make here.”
“We condemn the failures that we observed in Pembroke Park, as they demonstrated an utter disregard for a government’s obligation to guard the public’s purse against wasteful spending,” Breece wrote in a statement. The lack of controls means the town’s credit card “was and remains at risk for abuse.”
In March 2021, the Broward Office of the Inspector General received a tip that a town commissioner continuously misused his p-card to make “purchases for his personal benefit,” and the tipster gave details of 25 transactions made between September 2019 and July 2020. Investigators reviewed town records and found 200 transactions totaling $35,305.09 that “included purchases for food, gas, electronics, tools, travel, and other miscellaneous items.”
The commissioner was not named in the report, but the inspector general’s office confirmed Thursday its inquiry centered around Commissioner Geoffrey Jacobs, who is also a former mayor.
But Jacobs, when “questioned whether the commissioner made purchases that were personal in nature without having a primary public or municipal purpose and whether transactions were made without his knowledge,” told investigators he could not recall, or offered explanations “for their purpose that bore at times just a slight connection to town business,” according to the report.
On several occasions, a town events coordinator asked the commissioner to pick up coffee, bagels, and pizza to feed the volunteers during town events. “We noted that the commissioner did appear to, for the most part, buy bagels and coffee in bulk at Einstein Bros. Bagels,” according to the report, “However, his purchases also included custom bagels, such as a cheesy hashbrown bagel, spinach Florentine bagels, and a chocolate chip bagel with strawberry smear, as well as individual cold drinks.”
A finance director told investigators did not directly address questionable purchases “as he feared that it would impact” his job, according to the report. “He was hesitant about seeing the commissioners’ credit card purchases because he questioned if the purchases were business related or personal. He spoke with the former town manager about his concerns, but nothing changed.”
In the end, the report noted, it was otherwise understood, “’You go, you do your job, you keep your mouth shut. It’s that simple.’”
Breece said in a statement that while her office found “many concerning transactions on the commissioner’s p-card in the sample of purchases we reviewed, it could not test their propriety given the commissioner’s explanations for them against the town’s inadequate guidance regulating p-cards and travel expenditures.”
Jacobs on Thursday accused his political adversaries for filing the complaint, and told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the town is “deflecting” by looking at his receipts, but he questioned other commissioners’ spending as well. “I’ve been questioning others’ spending but they refuse to look into it. I’m the only one being targeted. Everything on my receipts is stuff for the town.”
For example, he said his credit card was used for the Christmas town staff and commission luncheon, “so I mean, ‘What the hell?’” he said. “I’m working for the town, I’m trying to fix this town.”
Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com. Follow on Twitter @LisaHuriash