The Los Angeles city government cannot account for over $7 million worth of fuel paid for with city funds, a recent audit has found.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Every year the city spends close to $29 million buying 14 million gallons of gasoline, natural gas and diesel fuel to power vehicles including garbage trucks, helicopters and police cruisers.
Some employees are issued fuel cards. Using a keypad each time they fill up, they're expected to input their vehicle number and an odometer reading. Other city employees are assigned to vehicles that are equipped with a high-tech system that automatically logs the vehicle number, mileage and quantity of gas pumped during fueling.
But those tracking systems can be bypassed, either manually or with so-called "master cards" that are assigned to each of the city's 141 fuel sites.
The bypass tools are meant to be used only if the normal system fails. But the Times reports that "auditors found they were used to dispense millions of gallons of fuel over a 22-month period beginning in 2009."
The audit could prove a problem for L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, chairman of the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.