Well, just when I thought Los Angeles couldn’t waste any more money, I read a story about $7 million worth of fuel that went bye-bye.
Even though City Hall has attempted to track the use of taxpayer-purchased fuel at dozens of city fueling sites, millions of gallons of fuel were pumped without any record of where it went. The fuel is supposed 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 odomoter reading. Some other employees are assigned vehicles equipped with a high-tech system that automatically logs the vehicle number, mileage and quantity of gas pumped.
Clearly, this $12 million fuel tracking system the city put into place a decade ago isn’t working. According to City Controller, Wendy Greuel, “most departments don’t effectively use the system to monitor employees, a situation that is indicative of the failures that are plaguing the city.”
This again proves the ineptness of the government to track anything and also focuses on the real possibility that people with access to these pumps have stolen from the rest of the taxpayers. The whole story is just disgusting.
