By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Federal and state authorities are investigating allegations two former state Department of Health employees falsified more than $42,000 in travel expenses, state auditors told legislators Thursday.
No charges have been filed against engineers Craig Burger and Mark McIntosh, who were fired in August 2008.
Auditor Charles Fiser told the Legislative Joint Audit Committee the federal Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General is investigating because the two former employees of the Health Department’s Center for Local Public Health’s Environmental Health Branch Engineering Section were paid through an EPA grant.
The state audit found Burger and McIntosh filed false travel expenses over several years and were reimbursed a total of $42,673. Also, the department has questioned the authenticity of another $9,101 in travel expense reimbursements the two received.
“Unbelievable,” Rep. Mike Burris, D-Malvern, said after hearing the audit report.
The audit report said Department of Health officials noticed last year that Burger had been reimbursed for 4,529 miles of travel for work in April 2008, but had actually traveled only 2,349 miles. Similar mileage discrepancies were discovered for May and June 2008.
Fiser said state auditors later discovered that both Burger and McIntosh had several travel expense reimbursements that were supported by falsified documents. The falsified documents included misspellings and other inaccuracies.
State auditors later found files in the office computers used by the men containing templates for hotel invoices.
Fiser said the two men were soccer coaches at a Little Rock-area private school and were apparently commuting from their out-of-town job sites to Little Rock daily for games rather than spending the night in a motel as indicated on their travel reimbursement forms.
In total, Burger was reimbursed $35,774 and McIntosh $6,999 based on false expense reports, the audit report said.
Mary Leath, deputy director of the Department of Health, said the supervisors of both Burger and McIntosh were both reprimanded and that the agency has instituted a variety of controls to prevent further problems.
“I can tell you that the Department of Health takes very seriously any allegations of the misuse of state funds,” Leath said. “In this case, we had two very creative state employees who took advantage of the system.”
Leath said the department is trying to get the money back from the two men and has withheld about $5,000 each in accrued annual leave the men would have normally earned.
State police and the Pulaski County prosecutor’s office also are investigating.
