Montgomery County’s efforts to provide publicly funded training for its employees has a checkered past, according to a report obtained by The Examiner.
There are currently multiple investigations into the county’s current tuition assistance program, with County Council members expressing concern that the program funded classes that have little to do with an employee’s job. But 10 years ago, former Inspector General Norman Butts found a similar problem when three employees from the Division of Fleet Management Services were reimbursed a total of $32,991 in a three-year period for college training ending in 1999.
Butts said the county had paid for courses that “were not essential” to the employee’s job performance and were “a waste of county funds amounting to a giveaway.”
He said a middle manager had “unilaterally [initiated] a separate and more generous ad hoc college tuition reimbursement scheme providing unlimited funds to a limited number of employees.”
The employees should have been reimbursed only $730 a year through the “authorized and established” tuition assistance program, Butt said.
But it’s that same program that’s now being investigated by the County Attorney’s Office, the current inspector general, the County Council and the Sheriff’s Office.
The Examiner has detailed several examples of questionable classes taken in the last three fiscal years, including “hot yoga” lessons, glass-fusing art classes, and fashion and portrait photography classes for a county crossing guard.
Office of Human Resources Director Joseph Adler said recently that he’s instituted new measures to make sure only appropriate classes are approved. He also pointed out that in response to the Butts report, the County Attorney’s Office said it was legal for the county to pay for “college courses outside [an] employee’s work interest” though the practice may be “problematic.”
In his report, Butts detailed how the Division of Fleet Management Services paid $21,506 for another employee’s undergraduate degree and graduate courses.
Butts also found that the employee had received a discount on tuition and had only paid $19,606 for the classes — meaning the employee was paid $1,900 more than he was entitled to receive. Butts called the move “possible fraud,” but the State’s Attorney Office reviewed the case and decided not to pursue any charges.
A month after Butts detailed that transaction in his report, the county paid the same employee $3,800 for additional tuition reimbursements, according to a follow-up report.
