Travis County Commissioners Court
November 3, 2009,
Item 10
10.
consider and take appropriate action on request by the executive manager of transportation and natural resources for mileage reimbursement.
>> good morning.
thank you for this what I hope to be a very short agenda item.
i did submit a reimbursement claim for $510.71 for reimbursement for my mileage for the entire past year.
there is, however, a budget rule that says I should have done that on a monthly basis, not on an annual basis.
so the auditor is following the budget rule saying that I cannot get reimbursed unless the court approves that.
i think it's a fairly straightforward request.
it was legitimate travel.
perhaps the budget rule needs to be looked at or maybe the additional discretion given to the auditor to decide just what's material and what's not.
but my beef is not with the auditor, they are following the rules.
it's the budget rule as printed.
it's really now just a matter of whether or not the court feels that I should be reimbursed or not.
>> March the ramifications -- what are the ramifications from an auditing perspective from changing the rules.
i understand from other executive managers that we don't submit for mileage because of the --
>> there are a lot of people who have a lot of mileage accumulated every month.
it's not inconsequential item.
one of the reasons for the rule is that prior to that rule people would wait until the end of the year and submit these things and there would be no budget for them and maybe the department didn't know they were driving or whatever.
the other thing is that when everything is handled at the end of the year it's extremely difficult to estimate, you know, ending fund balances and things like that.
>> what about changing to a quarterly report?
>> you know, it's your call.
joe is exactly right.
you have a rule, I think it's a good rule, we inforce that rule.
if someone come in and turned in their report 10 days late, obviously I would use my discretion and pay it.
obviously when the rule is not followed at all, I think the appropriate thing is to come here.
if you decide you want to pay it we will.
>> there's no question about that.
my question is what is the -- what is your --
>> we will get the expert up here.
>> are there any auditing issues to be considered if we were to contemplate a quarterly report rather than a monthly report?
>>
>> [indiscernible] auditor.
basically, what we do also in the car report would be okay.
the problem is when we do is monthly we check for duplicate mileage.
sometimes they do quarterly and had submitted a mileage before the system, we have to put those in a monthly basis anyway so the -- there's a system control for checking duplicates.
we don't put in a monthly basis, we still -- put in three months, we still have to divide it out by the month in order for us to make sure there's no duplicate mileage being turned in.
that has happened before that someone forgets and they put two months, threw three months in one form, the next month is one month again.
there's no way to audit those travels to make sure there was no duplication.
that's where the rule was there to make sure that the system controls are in place to make sure there's no duplicate mileage being caught.
>> could that system be effectuated on a quarterly basis?
why does it have to be my knowly?
couldn't somebody put duplicate submissions within a month as well?
>> because a lot of employees would rather have it monthly than quarterly.
there's a lot of mileage out there that's substantially like maybe 400 a month.
>> but if it were a quarterly at a max, you could still approximate submit monthly if it was more convenient for your department, correct?
>> yes, it would be.
but if the employee -- if they have a choice that they do quarterly or monthly and one month they do it monthly but then say ah next month, I will do it quarterly next time.
that takes away our audit ability to make sure that we are not duplicating duplication, it's each one or the other and they will have to make a choice and say I'm going to do quarterly, that's going to be quarterly all throughout.
that would be harder to kind of keep track, also, so that's why we put it to maintain a monthly basis.
now, like I said, we have a mileage going out which that would kind of alleviate all of that duplication, that's one that they put in there and they will catch any duplications if they are submitting it.
that would take one, two, three months at a time.
but that would also -- alleviate us and we are rolling that out as we go on throughout the year to make sure that there's no
>> [indiscernible] or anything.
but that could alleviate some of those one, two, three months basis.
>> does the auditor's office have any recommendations for any streamlining that could be done to make it more user friendly.
>> I don't know that we are posted for all of this.
we are kind of posted to pay, reimburse joe or not.
if we need to revisit this, I think we ought to have an appropriate agenda item.
this is a court policy, though.
>> yes.
>> right.
>> that says monthly.
>> right.
>> it's been in place a long time.
but it may be time to revisit it.
but this item is really whether or not we reimburse joe the $510 that he says that he's entitled to be reimbursed.
as far as I know, the only issue is that he submitted for multiple months rather than on a monthly basis.
which is what our policy requires.
>> right.
>> so it's an error item.
i stuck it on because joe had been advised that his request was not consistent with the policy.
so the court would have to authorize it.
>> that's what we routinely do, judge.
we may need to revisit it.
but this agenda posting doesn't allow us to do that.
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> discussion?
you all aren't saying he shouldn't be reimbursed, you are saying you shouldn't do it.
the court should --
>> we don't take it upon ourselves to disregard a rule that you passed.
>> I totally hear that.
as far as the discussion goes, do we have any idea of what other executive managers might come forward to make submission for the entire year?
i mean, I never make submissions, either, because --
>> I always make them when I go out of town, I don't make them locally.
to be honest, a lot of those meetings are go to are a long way from here.
i just eat that.
but if I go out of town, the mileage is fairly predictable, I can go to a map if there's a problem, you know, and -- but other employees, though, out there just driving around and around during the day and their reimbursement requests are fairly substantial.
>> they count on it being reimbursed immediately, particularly when the gas prices went really up.
they are driving all the time basically, a driving job.
for some of them it is very important to get reimbursed right away, they need the money.
>> but it may be that we need to revisit the policy.
>> sure.
but for this time we will approve it and we still --?
>> in the meantime, I will file monthly.
>> lesson learned mr.
gieselman.
>> yes, learning experience.
>> any more discussion?
all in favor?
show Commissioners Gomez, Huber, yours truly voting in favor.
and -- I'm voting against.
>> voting against, Commissioner Eckhardt.
do we need another item on the agenda?
>> I think we should.
>> okay.
don't spend it all in one place, joe.
>> I will try not to.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, November 3, 2009 1:40 PM
