Coral Gables commission votes to audit Amazon buys on city-issued P-cards

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A steam cleaner, a lint roller, pots and pans, three sets of silverware, Celsius fitness drinks. These are just some of the possibly questionable expenses that Coral Gables taxpayers are on the hook for when the city pays the bills on the purchase cards for a number of employees.

And nobody would be the wiser if former Miami-Dade School Board Member Lubby Navarro hadn’t been arrested earlier this month for grand theft for purchases with her own school board P-card.

Navarro has been accused of spending almost $100,000 on personal items for herself, her family and her boyfriend and was charged with one count of organized fraud of $50,000 or more, one count of between $20,000 and $100,000 and two counts of grand theft. After she resigned in December 2022 and administrators had to look over her bills, they began an investigation which found purchases made at Walmart, TJ Maxx, Party City, Office Depot and more, on items like appliances, beauty products, food, household goods and even 178 gift cards. Maybe she got them for teachers?

The news made Gables Commissioner Ariel Fernandez ask about the city’s own safeguards on P-cards. And what he got Tuesday morning was a list of items that, on the surface, seem more like personal needs than government needs, including a double-burner cooker, a cosmetic double mirror, white throw pillows, a picture frame, Himalayan salt, a Swiffer duster, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser sponges, Tide-to-go pens, Poo-Pourri bathroom air freshener, blue light blocking glasses, smartphone accessories, a lint roller — and a fancy resume portfolio.

Someone might be out of a job, alright.

Mayor Vince Lago almost didn’t want to even talk about it. The City Beautiful couldn’t possibly have a problem with its spending, right? He seemed to get needlessly defensive.

“We do not have P-cards,” Lago said, adding that he instituted an expense account of $5,000 for each commissioner and the mayor. “In 11 years we never had a card. Every dollar we spend has come from my $5,000 or from my own pocket,” Lago said, adding that he has “every single receipt.

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“Sometimes there’s $3,000, $2,500 left over at the end of the year that all goes back to the general fund,” he said. “I want to make sure because it’s very ambiguous. The city of Coral Gables is very careful.

“We don’t have access to P-cards, petty cash, anything like that.”

Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.

Fernandez said that all he wanted to do was give residents some peace of mind by explaining “the systems we have in place to safeguard the taxpayers’ dollars when it comes to P-cards.” And then he got that list of Amazon purchases.

Coral Gables Chief Procurement Officer Celeste Walker-Harmon said P-cards were issued to both full and part time employees who all get training “to make sure the understand the requirements for the use of the P-card.” And they sign a form saying they understand these rules.

They are required to reconcile purchases monthly, which are then reviewed and approved by the department director first before they go to procurement to make sure that Human Resources rule 29, which governs the use of the P-cards, is followed. That includes nothing over $1,000 and prohibited items like alcohol, ammunition, beauty treatments, legal fees, gas, medical services, entertainment, consulting services, stamps or car repairs, for example.

“Those purchases are automatically stopped by the bank,” Walker-Harmon said, adding that her department audits the bills monthly. “My staff goes through a reconciling process. We go through each item. It is in the department director’s discretion what they determine is appropriate.

“Specifically, I wanted to stress that they are reviewed thoroughly as far as compliance is concerned… If it is in compliance and it is not on the prohibited list, they are allowed to make those purchases,” she said.

And there is the rub, folks. The compliance is a net full of holes.

Walker-Harmon also said there was “refresher training” for anyone “we might deem” needs it. Say what? How many staffers have needed “refresher training” and what on Earth did they buy that was flagged?

Fernandez said that some of the charges didn’t make sense. “Why would any department approve a clothing steamer for staff? I’m a little concerned that any department director would approve this.

Finance Director Diana Gomez jumped in to say the steam cleaner could have been one that was used for tablecloths at an event. She, too, passed the buck.

“We don’t necessarily question every single transaction. That is the department’s responsibility to do.”

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Fernandez said he wanted an audit of all Amazon purchases for the last 24 months. But why limit it to just that online vendor? According to activist Maria Cruz, a frequent gadfly who had obtained 700 pages of Amazon purchases just in the last few months, there have been at least four charges at Publix as well as charges at Costco, Target and Panera as well.

She even saw a charge for $1,400 at Havana Harry’s, despite the “nothing over $1,000” rule.

Walker-Harmon asked for more parameters on the audit. After all, they already approved these purchases per compliance.

“Specifically what would we be looking for? Because, again, if it’s not strictly outlined as prohibited and the department memo says it is for a specific use, it wouldn’t be anything that I would flag as an issue.”

Fernandez said that despite the memo for the clothing steamer, that’s “not something that would be purchased for the workplace. It’s something that would be purchased for the home.” And there were other items, like the fitness drinks, that seemed like outright violations.

“These are very expensive drinks. Why should taxpayers be carrying that burden of those expensive drinks,” he asked. “When I got this information this morning I was beside myself.”

“To me, as a taxpayer, some of this is not appropriate,” said Cruz, who obtained 700 pages of Amazon purchases just in the last few months.

“We spend a lot of money,” Cruz said, and wondered if the double burner and pots and pans was the reason that the 427 Biltmore Way building always smells like a restaurant.

“Do we know how many coffee machines we have in the 427 building,” she asked. Because among the expenses are Nespresso pods. And “nobody knows where the Nespresso machine is.” Staff drinks coffee from the commercial coffee maker rented by the city, Cruz said.

But this is not the first time the city has a problem with P-cards. In 2008, then City Manager David Brown, who charged lavish lunches with wine at the Biltmore Hotel and fancy Gables eateries on his city-issued Visa, was caught trying to falsify back-dated documents to show that he reimbursed the city — which he only did after he got caught. He ended up charged with violating state law, a noncriminal charge, and he lost his job.

One would think that 15 years later, the city — which implemented the P-card program in 2003 — would have better security than just a list of prohibited items. And a better system of checks and balances than a sign-off from a department director. For all we know, the department director is the one who with the lint problem.

Commissioners, who spent more time talking about sidewalks and light poles than the possible misspending of public tax dollars, voted unanimously to conduct an audit of two years of Amazon purchases — though they should expand that to all P-card purchases, unless there is something specific that Fernandez is looking for.

Walker-Harmon told commissioners to give staff two to three months to get it done.

Is that time to go on a spending spree?