A Maryland town mayor has been charging thousands of taxpayer dollars to an unauthorized debit card and not disclosing the receipts from council members for the past 11 months, according to Brentwood officials.
Mayor Xzavier Montgomery-Wright, along with town Treasurer Orson Carter, have made more than 50 “questionable” charges using a debit card they opened in January 2010 without notifying other council members, according to Councilwoman Marlene Robinson.
Montgomery-Wright’s debit charges include an outstanding $2,400 personal cell phone bill and a $323 plane ticket for a trip to Alabama, Robinson reported in a council meeting. A line-item list of charges has not been released by the town.
Robinson said she discovered the expenditures missing from Brentwood’s disbursement records months ago. When she pressed Montgomery-Wright and Carter for an explanation, the mayor refused to release documents pertaining to the debit card, according to Robinson.
The council has since canceled the card.
Montgomery-Wright was not present at the meetings. She has been out of the country and won’t be back until Dec. 21, according to the Brentwood town clerk Melora Anderson. The Examiner could not reach her for comment. No criminal charges have been filed against Montgomery-Wright.
Robinson and Councilwoman Aneeka Harrison are now demanding an external audit on the card to identify every unauthorized charge that should be repaid to town residents.
But council members Jeffrey Clark and Nina Young objected, saying an external audit would be too costly.
“My preference, before we go out and spend four-to-six thousand dollars [on an external audit] is that we do an internal audit,” Young said. “I would volunteer to sit down with the treasurer and look at these items.”
Young defended the mayor’s phone charges, saying the payments were being docked from her monthly salary.
Harrison argued that an internal audit would be tainted.
“I don’t have any faith that the information would be true and it would be factual and it would be complete,” she said. “We need to make sure we are safeguarding the town’s money, period. … Let’s not play games.”
The council members grew increasingly ornery with each other during the meeting, raising their voices as some threatened to walk out of the meeting.
“We have thousands of dollars — and we’re worrying about nickel-and-diming an audit — that have been debited against Brentwood taxpayers’ dollar without council approval,” Robinson charged. The meeting ended without a majority vote on the external audit. The town will now resort to an internal examination of the debit charges.
