City auditors who are investigating $9.4 million charged to remove debris from 112 wildfire-ravaged homes in Rancho Bernardo are having to rely on photocopies of crucial documents while the contractors retain the originals.
The authentic weight tickets are the only official record of tons of rubble hauled from each property. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which provided $4.4 million for the program, requires that the city keep the originals for three years.
Tickets from landfills are crucial to any accounting because the debris-removal companies billed the city by the ton.
Photocopies in the city files are difficult to decipher. On some, the tonnage isn't legible. On others, it appears someone put a sticker or Post-it note over typed information and wrote on it. Some copies are almost black.
Mayor Jerry Sanders ordered an audit of the debris-removal program after The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Aug. 3 that A.J. Diani Construction Co. of Santa Maria and Watsonville-based Granite Construction Co. hauled far more debris than privately hired companies did from comparable lots.
The Aug. 3 article also showed that Diani and Granite charged the city millions more than stated in their contracts.
Mayoral spokesman Darren Pudgil said it is the city's “normal operating procedure” to rely on photocopies. However, the auditors won't hesitate to request the originals if necessary, Pudgil said.
He said four auditors have not found any discrepancies so far.
The Union-Tribune had reviewed copies of weight tickets for 21 homesites up until yesterday morning, when city auditors arrived at the Environmental Services Department to examine about 20 thick binders of copies of weight tickets. Reporters were told they could not resume their review until the audit was finished.
The reporters' observations in the 21 cases include:
On at least 27 weight tickets, key elements were unreadable, such as the tonnage or dumping time.
Some 625 of 758 tickets had handwritten addresses but no indication of when they were written. At least 69 tickets were split among addresses.
On at least seven tickets, it appears holes were punched through the spot where the gross weight was recorded.
Despite difficulty in reading some tickets, reporters found weights recorded at the dumps did not match the invoices in almost all cases.
In two cases, the weight recorded at the dump was doubled by hand.
Veronica Verde, a spokeswoman for FEMA's Southern California office, said the agency will review weight tickets and will not accept copies. Among other things, FEMA guidelines call for the tickets to include the address from which debris was removed. Discrepancies could result in a loss of funding.
Meanwhile, City Attorney Michael Aguirre, who asked the companies last week to enter mediation to resolve questions about their bills, said he is concerned the companies are “gathering evidence and preparing their case” while his office can't do the same.
Aguirre said his investigators have extensive experience recovering money from contractors for false claims, but the Mayor's Office hasn't given them access to any of the public records they need.
“In this case, it would be very helpful if we had a united front on behalf of the city,” Aguirre said.
In a letter to Aguirre dated Aug. 20, Granite's vice president and general counsel said the company was conducting “an internal investigation, which is approximately halfway complete” and so far has found “no evidence of any wrongdoing or improper charges. ... ”
Union-Tribune intern Wendy Fry contributed to this report.
Brooke Williams: (619) 293-1228; brooke.williams@uniontrib.com
