At the end of last month, just one week before State Auditor Susan Montee released her department’s audit of the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport authority, Mayor Francis G. Slay announced the new director of the airport, who will start on January 1.
Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge will assume the top spot in the airport authority’s administration – just above the mayor’s brother, Gerard Slay, who serves as senior deputy director and chief operating officer.
She will have her work cut out for her if she aims to update and improve the airport’s financial operations, according to Montee’s audit released last Thursday.
The audit turned up the continued operation – at the estimated cost of $1.8 million per year – of a firehouse at the airport that the Federal Aviation Administration deemed unnecessary.
It determined that airport management had not performed a cost analysis to determine if janitorial services should be performed by City employees or outsourced.
It uncovered that the airport had not adequately monitored the cash receipt operations of the parking contractor, Central Parking, which collected $9.2 million in cash in the year that ended June 30, 2008, the period covered by the audit. “If money disappeared, the City wouldn’t have any reason to know,” Montee said when releasing the report.
For that same period, airport management did not adequately review audit reports of passenger facility charge revenues that generated approximately $30.5 million for the airport, Montee reported.
Several large airport expenditures – for sums as high as $1.9 million – were not properly approved, being signed off by a manager when policy stated that only the airport director or assistant director of finance had the authority to sign requisitions and vouchers over $100,000.
The State audit also turned up systematic failure in oversight and due diligence. “Accounting duties are not adequately segregated, and there is minimal independent oversight related to receipts,” the audit states.
For example, the airport’s “Finance and Accounting Division transmitted approximately $206 million to the City Treasurer during the year ended June 30, 2008.” Yet, “there is no documented supervisory review or comparison of the monies received by the account clerk to amounts transmitted to and received by the City Treasurer’s office.”
The lack of oversight and due diligence revealed by the audit was best expressed by Montee during a question-and-answer period following her presentation of the report at the Wainwright Building dowtown.
“They didn’t find any problems because there isn’t any monitoring being done,” Montee said, specifically regarding the cash parking payments, though the comment applies more generally to many areas of the airport’s finances.
The current deputy director of Finance/Administration for the airport is Susan Kopinski, who was appointed to this new position March 2008. For most of the period covered by the audit, the airport’s chief financial officer was Kenneth L. Below, who died May 24, 2008.
The airport director for the period covered by the audit was Richard Hrabko who was appointed in April 2007 and is retiring.
The response of airport management to the audit is included in the report. Though often contentious in their response, airport management conceded that an updated cost analysis of outsourcing janitorial services “is appropriate,” said it would now request annual audits of passenger facility charge revenues, and said accounting duties had been segregated and would be more properly supervised in the future.
Airport management sarcastically noted that the audit report had recorded a change in policy regarding which officials were authorized to sign requisitions and vouchers over $100,000. “It is difficult to disagree with a recommendation that the airport had already taken care of long before the auditors began their audit,” management’s response noted.
When releasing the report, Montee dismissed this snide explanation.
“Only A can sign, but B was signing. Now only A can sign, but C is signing,” she summarized the change. “There was an attempt to change the problem, but not enough was done.”
As for that $1.8 million (annual) firehouse the FAA deemed to be unnecessary, the airport authority has a problem. They are paying for it, though they don’t want it – but it’s not their decision to close the south firehouse.
“We will continue to pursue this request with the City’s Fire Department,” they note in their response.
The audit report notes, “Based on discussions with Fire Department officials, they feel the south firehouse is still necessary, but did not provide any specific information to support this position.”
The current fire chief is Dennis Jenkerson, who reports directly to Director of Public Safety Charles Bryson. Bryson was asked for an explanation on Monday but had not responded by press time.
Bryson reports directly to Mayor Slay, whose brother Gerard Slay was second in command at the airport throughout the period audited and remains its chief operating officer.
In describing the breakdown of her report, Montee said, “At the end of the day, some elected official is in charge and responsible. In the city of St. Louis, it’s a bunch of broken up ones.”