By Derek Spellman
dspellman@joplinglobe.com
NEOSHO, Mo. — In the wake of acknowledgments that the city of Neosho used a state loan reserved for airport hangars to pay its bills and make payroll, a councilwoman says she will seek a state audit of all the city’s finances.
Councilwoman Heather Bowers said she obtained petition papers for an audit, requested several weeks ago on a separate city matter. She said she has not yet started gathering the 686 signatures that would trigger a review of the city’s financial records by the state auditor’s office.
Bowers said she will ask the City Council at its regular meeting Tuesday night to authorize a state audit. If the council declines, she said, she will push for an audit via the petition route.
City Manager Jan Blase last week acknowledged to the Globe that he used a state loan designated for the construction of new airport hangars to “make payroll and pay our bills.”
MoDOT review
The Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission, which provided the $895,100 loan to the city in February 2008, on Monday sent Blase a letter stating that the Department of Transportation intends to review “all city records at they pertain to” the loan.
But Bowers said the MoDOT review would be confined to the hangar-loan money, while a review by the state auditor’s office would cover all city finances.
“From a public standpoint, I think we really need an audit,” she said, characterizing the hangar loan as a symptom of a “broader issue” when it comes to financial oversight at City Hall.
The cost of the review by the state auditor’s office would be between $35,000 and $50,000.
No comment
Mayor Jeff Werneke said he had no comment about Bower’s petition push.
Blase told the Globe: “I don’t think there is anything that concerns me about that (a state audit) other than the cost.”
He said that if an audit would set people’s “minds at ease,” then it would be “worth it.”
The city never put the $895,100 hangar loan into a separate restricted fund, but instead put it in a general fund that it uses to finance its operations. It received the money in early 2008. About $100,000 has been expended for site plans and designs for the work, but the hangars themselves have not been built, and there is no timetable for when they will be.
City officials have said there was no requirement that the loan money be put into a separate account, and they cite clean findings from the city’s most recent audit. They also vow that the hangars will be built once sales tax revenues revive.
Werneke told the Globe on Saturday that he had been in contact with Pete Rahn, director of the Missouri Department of Transportation. Rahn, he said, told him that the city had been making payments on the loan.
Lori Marble, a spokeswoman for MoDOT, said the results of the department’s review of the state hangar loan will be sent to Rahn and to the Highways and Transportation Commission.
As for other questions, including whether the agency thinks the terms of the contract have been violated, whether the money has been spent illegally, and whether the state will take any action against the city, Marble said the agency cannot answer until after the review is complete.
Normal course
Werneke said he expects MoDOT to conduct a review as a “normal course of action.”
“I’m not shocked, or appalled, or worried,” he told the Globe on Tuesday.
He also said the city would fully cooperate with MoDOT’s review.
“I want to oversupply information to MoDOT,” he said.
