Several city employees in Hollywood are now under investigation for unauthorized spending. At least $1 million of taxpayer dollars are now gone, and pink slips could be coming for some employees.
There was a special meeting at 1 p.m. Tuesday at Hollywood City Hall Chambers.
It came after a preliminary report, released by the Office of the Investigator General of Broward County, stating from 2013 to 2014, several key city employees were responsible for spending almost $1 million of taxpayer money without authorization.
The money was spent to pay two companies for temporary employees; employees for the police department, fire department and water treatment headquarters. But they never got authorization from the city commission to do so.
Preliminary findings say: "The city never attempted to obtain competitive rates which likely lead to the waste of taxpayer dollars, moreover the payments for the services were never covered by any written contract, never budget and never authorized by the commission."
It goes on to read: "In order to facilitate the unauthorized payments, city officials inappropriately used a direct voucher payment system that allowed little accountability and permitted deviation from the controls set out in the city code policies and procedures."
Some of the employees named in the report are former city manager Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark, she now works for the City of Coral Gables where she holds the same job; Matthew Lalla, the current city director of financial services; and current city attorney Jeffery Sheffel.
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Vice Mayor Peter Hernandez was so upset with him, he motioned Sheffel be fired, "Well it's a trust issue at this point and that trust has been violated." That motion didn't pass.
One thing is certain, Mayor Peter Bober said there's no way $1 million of taxpayer money will ever be spent like this again.
"One of the recommendations that I made today is that the city have a full-time internal auditor that reports directly to the city commission, that we're not only looking at numbers being spent but also the process in that contracts are followed," Mayor Bober said.
Another big topic discussed Tuesday was whether the people named in this report could be charged criminally. But again, this is a preliminary report.
