That bad odor coming from the University of Nebraska isn't from the athletic locker rooms. It isn't even from the shady shenanigans of the NU leadership pushing to promote yet more human embryos be lethally exploited for gruesome experimentation. (Though it sure could be that.)No, this particular odor comes from the infamous pairing of "waste and fraud" that bureaucrats so love to engage in.
Here's the story from Nebraska Watchdog.
In the last few years Nebraska state funds were used to buy a $628 fountain pen from Borsheims, a $750 dollar picture frame, a $219 golf club, and a $250 Nintendo Wii game. By the way the Wii was never used, the golf club can’t be found, and according to State Auditor Mike Foley the purchases, “have the appearance of being inappropriate.”
Those are just some of the findings in a 233 page audit of the University of Nebraska’s credit card system released today by Foley. Foley said the credit cards have been issued to over 2,000 University employees.
As Nebraska Watchdog first reported on Wednesday the audit has turned up questionable credit card purchases, including first class airline tickets which are strictly prohibited by the University. Foley said today that $283,000 in first class tickets were purchased by University employees between July 1, 2007 and December 31, 2008.
20 of the tickets cost more than $5,000 each, five cost more than $10,000, and one round trip first class ticket to China cost over $15,000.
According to the audit Harold Maurer, Chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, used his University credit card to purchase three first class tickets. Maurer went to China, Germany, and Hawaii. The China trip cost $11,886.46, the Germany trip cost $4,751.03 and the Hawaii trip cost $2,111.84.
The audit also notes that John Christensen, Chancellor of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, used his NU credit card to buy plane tickets to a conference in Minneapolis for his wife and son. The tickets cost $302.60 each. According to the audit the purchases, “were not properly approved.”
Foley said the credit cards have been given to over 2,000 University employees.
The audit also revealed a technique Foley called “pyramiding” which found employees circumventing the credit card’s dollar limitations. Foley said most of the cards had a dollar limit on any single purchase but the audit discovered that employees got around the limit by dividing large purchases into several smaller purchases. According to the audit the pyramiding transactions totaled over $330,000.
The audit also found that while all credit card purchases are to be approved by two people on many occasions they were only approved by one person, the same individual who made the credit card purchase. Foley said a serious weakness in the University’s accounting controls allowed the card’s primary user to log in to the system, change their user name, and avoid the approval by a second individual...
So far the bureaucrats in charge are stonewalling, passing the buck (no pun intended) and saying, as they always do, in the broad scheme of things, this is no big deal.
