Waste of the Day: Racial Bias Reform Funds Used on Golf Carts

Topline: Open the Books criticized the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office last year after the office spent hundreds of millions of dollars and still failed to meet the terms of three court orders that mandated an end to racial discrimination in its traffic patrols and internal affairs.

Fighting racial discrimination by – buying a golf cart?

It’s now clear why the spending failed. An Oct. 8 budget analysis by the independent monitor overseeing the sheriffs’ compliance 8 claims that $163 million of the money was spent not on ending racial bias, but on unrelated expenses like office renovations, a golf cart and horseback riding.

Key facts: The sheriff’s office that serves Phoenix, Ariz., has been under federal oversight since 2013, when it ignored a U.S. district court’s order to end its “immigration patrols” that the court said systematically targeted Latinos. Police were pulling over drivers to check their immigration status with no reason for suspicion besides their race. 

The new audit analyzed $226 million that Maricopa County has supposedly spent on reforming its sheriff’s office and found that 72% of the money was “unrelated to or unnecessary for compliance,” including some expenses that showed “purposeful misrepresentation.”

Most of the misspent money was payroll costs for employees the sheriff’s office claimed were working on compliance efforts related to the court order, but were not, according to the monitor’s findings.

The misspent money also included $17 million on purchases like $1.5 million worth of office renovations, $1.8 million for vehicles and fuel, an $11,000 golf cart, $7,000 for cable TV and $3,000 for car washes. There was also $310,000 in travel costs, including $4,070 to test out horses for a mounted patrol unit that never materialized.

A non-transparent and non-verifiable budget

Auditors argued that the sheriff office’s “budgeting process lacks transparency and verifiability.” The County Board of Supervisors approves the budget at the start of the year but does not check that the money is actually spent accordingly, according to the audit.

The audit also claims that Maricopa County violated Section 9 of the Arizona Constitution, which limits how much local governments can spend each year. The sheriff’s office was allowed to exceed the limit because its spending was ordered by a federal court, but it now appears the expenses were actually unrelated to the court order.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Supporting quote: Sheriff Jerry Sheridan told FOX10 Phoenix, “We have found discrepancies within the … budget analyst report, which we are continuing to review and will address in the future.” 

Summary: The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has wasted over a decade and an unseemly amount of money trying to come into compliance with federal law, but even stronger oversight is necessary.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.