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Is this what fraud looks like? 40% of police budget goes to administration; Budget for 3.25 FTE administration personel is $2.14m but public disclosure puts their comp at $648k, leaving $1.45m unaccounted for. More details in comments.
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29d
Yes, total comp all included in the $648k. Salaries about half of it.
Using the public disclosed total comp numbers (edit: reasonably) match the budget in (edit: the other departments I checked); and for the non-administrative police personnel.
You’re ignoring so many potential items here, and coming in wayyyyy too hot to be taken seriously. Immediately jumping to auditor bribes and embezzlement will get you laughed out of any room-rightfully.
Do the public comparatives you looked at for salary include benefits? In the public sector that’s easily 30-40% increase on salary as health plans are usually full or near full paid for, pensions accounted for, and leave etc is much better.
Overtime? Won’t be part of the annual numbers but absolutely should be accounted for in the budget. That’s time and half or double time depending on the structure (and comparable increase in pension and other benefits to match). Additional items as others have mentioned like covering the cost of other pensions for old employees, centralized admin costs from other places, old healthcare for retired individuals, covering needs for out of town/county resources for large events, the list goes on and on.
Wanting an explanation is one thing. Accusing people of fraud (not just the dept but auditors and admin too apparently) with zero justification makes you look like an asshole.
Last but not least; nobody would put fraud under payroll, unless it involves ghost employees.
In fairness at a smaller scale like local depts, it’s not impossible to have someone keep everything recorded and just divert it. And the difference between FTE and spend (or similar type items) would be a place to start looking into this.
But of course I wouldn’t look at it the same way OP did and immediately accuse 3 organizations and 20 people with a conspiracy
I wouldn't recommend going full nuclear and throwing around accusations of fraud, you can simply ask what is in the personnel total since it looks high for the low FTEs in the division. I have experience in police budgets and if I had to guess that extra amount is pension contributions which can be quite high if their pension plan has a large unfunded liability, they may also be contributing extra money every year to the plan's unfunded liability. The fact this is police admin will give you a clue that it contains administrative expenditures for the entire department that is not specifically just for the few employees within admin like additional pension contributions and property and liability insurance.
Also - it could potentially include cross charges from city for maintenance, the payroll system, etc.
Agree,.it's a lot of line items that could fall under admin other. Just FOIA / open records for an explanation.
Whose intern is this?
You're looking after them this week, remember?
It could also be retiree insurance that comes from another fund. Government budgets are open records under FOIA. Put in a records request to get their line item detail budget and see what object codes are used.
I mean, a budget is just a plan. Maybe some of the positions they budgeted for are vacant, or some of the budget is performance bonuses that will be paid later in the year. And if they’re on a calendar year, there’s 2/3 of the year left - 648k x 3 = 1.94m
It’s hard to say without having some detail on the YTD actuals.
You won't find the answer you're looking for here. Given that these are partial screenshots, it's not clear what the parameters are for each report and how categories are defined. Therefore, to be candid here, it's clear that you aren't clear about the information yourself.
There's nothing wrong with that, but it isn't advisable to go into a conversation with guns blazing when you don't have an appropriate understanding of what you want to talk about, unless your actual objective is to seek catharsis in venting outrage, accomplish nothing while making enemies, and enjoy the feeling of being a upright citizen who, unlike the complacent and dull-eyed general population, is capable of seeing the city council for what it really is - just give it time. This is, by the way, the vibe your draft note is giving off. I recommend you don't send it. Or do, and kindly make a post next Saturday with the response.
The more reasonable course of action here would be to politely ask someone from leadership to help you, or refer you to someone who can help you, understand how the numbers in the report total up, how the numbers relate to each other, and what the lines mean. As for why the budget keeps going up: Put away the pitchfork and, assuming it's not already explained in the supplemental literature, just politely ask?
I want to see the city’s response to the who owns the Maserati that parks there on occasion demand in is letter personally.
I won’t hold my breath waiting form them to disclose who owns a private vehicle.
You are looking at a budget not actuals lol. Fraud...I don't think you know what that even means and you certainly won't get an answer looking at a freaking budget 😅
Reddit always like: ITS FRAUD
Where’s there’s smoke, there are wires! #rickyism
Nah just the depreciation loophole!
this is what happens when an auditor thinks they are a subject matter expert
I’d be curious what’s all being lumped in personnel as the other two buckets are absurdly small for a pd. One Tahoe alone will set you back upwards of 100k up-fitted for duty use. A 20 person dept would need 1-2 a year for patrol plus 1 or so for admin.
Then you got training which as a detective I could easily have 10k a year in training costs
Keep in mind too this is a smaller dept the police chief (or director of public safety it appears) could be pulling a pension north of 100-150k depending where they retired from as small town chiefs are usually people who retired from big cities with nothing else to do with their time. So they coulda bought the masi with the director salary and live off the pension.
Oh and if you already pulled their salary’s through public records you know they ain’t embezzling it through salary.
Also on that note look at the CAFR issued by the auditors to see what actual expenses were city budget are smoke and mirrors vs actual results
i bet this guy just finished his audit internship
Public pension plan contributions are obscenely high due to requirements to cover unfunded liabilities. The 50 percent of wages is not out of line for this kind of thing.
Fundamental lesson. Accounting isn't as neat as intermediate makes you think it is.
Without line items it is impossible to tell.
Several things: If you look at the table below they already have 22 full time people and 2 part time which means that, most probably total personel costs include that already, and if you divide total amount of employess money by the total amount of people you will get about less than 100k which sounds resonable for salaries in policies + socials and tax.
Plus as people already have said administrative costs could include more than just salary for personel in administrative. Plus sometimes could happen that salary is budgeted under one code, but actuals is reported on a different one.
Any differences in salaries budgeted and then realized could contribute to the difference, for example I don't police chief in actuals.
You’re right something is weird. Even ignoring the public comp figures how could 3.5 FTEs sum to over $2M.
You’d probably have better luck identifying the auditor if you local government via th city website and alerting them of this is something you want to escalate.
It’s also possible that the whole departments personnel cost is getting allocated to admin. Check the personnel costs of other non-admin police dept groups
I hadn't even considered that. I did check the audit and it didn't find any problems, but I suppose they would have just confirmed that things were in the right buckets?
Edit: I guess if you embezzle a million and a half you can choose an auditor that will be open to a little but of green influence on how hard they look....
I wouldn’t be looking at the budget, I’d be looking at the actual expenditures for the given fiscal year (say 2023) and the funds the activity was recorded in if you were performing a serious analysis. From there you can test underlying transactions to determine compliance/reasonableness to contracts, union agreements, regulatory requirements etc. . Jumping from 0-100 on fraud is going to make you look like a quack. Source: former government fraud auditor
Tell me you’re an intern without telling me
Jesus Murphy
Yeah, it's fraud. Call the cops!
It's probably the liability insurance. Police brutality is expensive and so are the premiums.
Could be cash payouts to informants and snitches.
Might be to the fetanyl dealers.
This. When accountants start looking at the larger effects of the money in society, any government or public entity doing shady shit is in for a rude awaking.
Here is my draft note to the local leadership. Is there some other explanation I'm missing? I spent a lot of time looking at this and cant figure where that money is going. And.... it's been rising steadily like a cancerous tumor. Is this too much? Okay. the Masterati may be a bit of stretch
_____
Dear leaders.
I am reaching out as a resident of our community with concerns regarding the financial management of our police department’s administrative costs. Recent reviews of our budget allocations have highlighted some alarming trends and discrepancies that I believe warrant immediate attention and action. For the fiscal year 2024, the total budget for police administration is reported at $2.19 million, with $2.15m indicated for personnel. Out of this, salaries plus benefits utilizing the public compensation disclosure produce a total of $648,000, broken down as follows: • Director of Public Safety (0.5 FTE) - $116,000 • Deputy Police Chief (1 FTE) - $289,000 • Commander (0.5 FTE) - $134,000 • Administrative Assistant (0.75 FTE) - Estimated @ $60,000 • Analyst (0.5 FTE) - $49,000. This, there remains a stunning sum of $1.498 million in the administrative budget that is unaccounted for.I spent some time trying to find an answer to this inconsistency but was unable to: my method of comparing the disclosed salaries to personnel costs in other departments had high consistency. Moreover, compared to five local jurisdictions, I was unable to find reporting of overtime spend for TOWN police or clear indications of what employees are exempt, making it difficult to exclude that explanation even given that administrative personnel should be exempt. The difficulty of finding an explanation for the unaccounted $1.498 million in personnel is particularly concerning given that the administrative cost constitutes 38% of the total police budget in TOWN , compared to just over 10% in neighboring jurisdictions like NEIGHTBOR1 and NEIGHBOR2.
Moreover, the rapid expenditure rate of these funds (41% of yearly budget by the May 2nd meeting, 25% into the year) raises further questions about the budget management practices and the specific uses of these substantial financial resources, as well as commitment to transparency and good management. Such disparities not only impact our fiscal sustainability but also the community’s trust in how our resources are managed.
In light of these concerns, I respectfully request: 1. A detailed explanation for the $1.498 million unaccounted funds within the Police Admin budget. 2. An overview of the measures in place to monitor and control spending within the police department, especially in administrative areas. 3. Transparency about any additional benefits or expenditures included in the administrative costs that may not have been explicitly outlined in the available budget documents. 4. prompt disclosure of employee exempt/non-exempt status and overtime expenditures, as well as inclusion of such in budgets going forward; perhaps how NEIGHBOR does. This will allow our village to be consistent with standard transparency practices of nearby communities.
Additionally, a matter that might seem minor but has caught the attention of many community members is the presence of a luxury vehicle—specifically a Maserati, frequently seen in the police department parking lot. With Business Week reporting a typical Maserati owner income of $500K yearly, an explanation of the ownership may prevent the community from getting a misleading impression.
Your prompt and detailed response to these issues will greatly contribute to upholding transparency and reinforcing responsible governance in our community.
-CITIZEN
Lmaoooo
Do you have a reasonable explanation for where that million and a half is going? I know the writing is a bit much but that's why I'm asking.
You're not going to get an answer, dude.
Yes, which is why I am asking here---How would you figure our why 40% of the police budget is administrators instead of ~10% like other comparisons?
It's just corruption.
It’s a stupid question. The answer is right in front of you.
Please spell it out for me?
It’s a budget
I needed a laugh this morning & you've provided it in spades, cheers!
Send it and report back!