The Suwannee Valley Transit Authority Board of Directors unanimously approved their official response to the Florida Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) working draft audit report on Friday, Jan. 16. The response, drafted by interim administrator Teresa Fortner and board attorney Hal Airth, focuses on the steps the SVTA board has taken to improve its oversight and to avoid future complications.

SVTA’s response addresses each of the OIG’s findings: non-compliance with required accounting principles, mismanagement of time and attendance reporting, and “unallowable and miscalculated leave and compensatory payouts” for former administrator Gwendolyn Pra and director of operations William “Bill” Steele totaling over $192,000.

One sentence in the document didn’t sit right with one SVTA board member, Columbia County Commissioner Bucky Nash. The first sentence of the section addressing Pra and Steele’s unallowable payouts read: “During FY [fiscal year] 2012 and FY 2013, SVTA staff believed that Policies and Procedures were in place regarding the pay out of comp time.” Nash disagreed with this sentence, arguing the term “staff” included the former executives and negated the OIG’s report finding Pra and Steele’s payouts to be “unallowable.”

“I believe they [Pra and Steele] compensated themselves, and the policy and procedures did not allow that,” said Nash. “One of the biggest discussions […] in the many minutes [is]: was there any justification that the policies and procedures were adopted to allow them to do that?”

SVTA Chairman and Suwannee County Commissioner Jason Bashaw said the sentence protected staff during the time period of the disallowed payouts. SVTA staff followed their administrator’s lead, trusting there were policies in place to support Pra’s decisions. According to Airth, Fortner added the sentence in after his initial draft.

“There is a compelling loyalty to add things in there like that to help protect the previous administrator,” commented Nash. “I think the board needs to separate themselves from that and just answer [the report].”

“I see it as loyalty to the organization,” countered Airth. “The organization is being ‘attacked’ by this OIG report, and they want to defend their actions and their organization.”

The board decided to strike the sentence about STVA staff and policies and procedures, seeing no change to the overall OIG response, and also made a minor amendment to wording regarding the digitalization of minutes.

Former director of operations Steele addressed the OIG report as well and sent a copy of his 16,000 word response to the Democrat on Thursday, Jan. 15. In it, he refutes the OIG’s findings with his own point by point study.

Steele says the OIG’s findings of missing timesheets are false, a statement backed up by the STVA board’s response which affirms that 19 timesheets have been located and sent to the OIG.

Steele further finds fault in the OIG’s reliance on the 1983 SVTA rules rather than the Policies and Procedures amended in 2012 that seemingly authorized Pra and Steele to receive otherwise “unallowable” payouts.

He further believes the OIG incorrectly interpreted the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and concludes the OIG team “had a pre-set agenda with its goal and intent being to disgrace SVTA and its management team.”

To read Steele’s full response, go to www.suwanneedemocrat.com and search “Steele’s response.”