The Suwannee Valley Transit Authority will prepare a response to the Florida Department of Transportation Office of the Inspector General’s draft audit report today, Jan. 16, at 1 p.m. after dropping a previously drafted response disagreeing with the OIG on Tuesday, Jan. 13. Meanwhile, former SVTA director of operations William “Bil” Steele sent the Democrat his response via e-mail. The 16,000 word response can be found attached with this article. Former administrator Gwendolyn Pra has not responded yet.

The OIG report’s findings included Pra and Steele received payouts of over $192,000 in unallowable and miscalculated leave and compensatory payouts. The SVTA’s original draft response, which contains no input from either Pra or Steele, states “this finding is primarily based upon the premise that the Administrator and Director of Operations were paid for comp time, which was not provided for in the ‘Personnel Rules and Regulations.’” 

Those rules and regulations have been the subject of some debate after two sets of minutes surfaced from a June 25, 2012 SVTA meeting in which one set of minutes seemingly approved changes to the rules that allowed Pra and Steele to receive the unallowed payouts while the other set of minutes did not. The SVTA’s draft response argues there are provisions in their set of rules that authorize compensatory time for administrative staff and “cash ins” for exempted personnel (salaried employees), citing the SVTA’s original 1983 rules and the set of minutes that approves the updated policies and procedures.

The original draft response from the SVTA also disagrees with the OIG’s findings of subpar accounting and record-keeping and lack of timesheet management. SVTA Interim Administrator Teresa Fortner, staff members, and an unpaid consultant (later identified by Fortner as SVTA’s auditor Richard Powell) wrote the dropped response.

“I am in 100 percent agreement with the OIG findings,” said SVTA board member and Columbia County Commissioner Bucky Nash. “I think that this [response] draft is somewhat confrontational and we’re trying to explain or justify things that were done. I think as far as a response, it should be very simple. It should be ‘we agree with OIG findings and here is what we’ve done so far … and we will need additional time to go through our policies and procedures to bring them up to par. Put all that other stuff behind us.”

Several other board members echoed Nash’s opinion of conceding to the report, and the board moved to hold an emergency meeting to draft a different, more agreeable response.

Upon inquiry from a local media outlet about the mystery minutes from 2012, newly elected SVTA Chairman Jason Bashaw ensured the truth would come out as the SVTA board learned more through the various investigations being performed, including the OIG’s and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s.

The SVTA board also addressed the OIG report finding fault in Pra and Steele’s usage of compensatory time to receive payouts. According to SVTA rules, salaried employees cannot earn overtime but can earn compensatory time for hours worked over a typical 40 hour week.

The SVTA board altered their compensatory time policy during the meeting, specifying any comp time earned, hour for hour, must be used within 30 days from the end of the 80 hour pay period during which the comp time was earned. If an employee does not use their earned comp time by the end of the 30 days, the time will be lost. The SVTA administrator will be authorized to approve other employees’ comp time and the SVTA board chairman will authorize the administrator’s comp time. Compensatory time will be reported at SVTA board meetings for review and to address any potential questions or issues.

“What I read in the OIG’s report is their main concern was compensation – being paid for the comp time,” said SVTA attorney Hal Airth.

“We’re resolving that issue right now,” said Bashaw.

The SVTA board will hold an emergency meeting to draft their official response to the OIG’s draft report today, Friday, Jan. 16, at 1 p.m. at SVTA headquarters located at 1907 Voyles St., Live Oak. The deadline for the SVTA to submit a response to the OIG is Jan. 22.