Kiffmeyer overpaid herself and her staff, audit finds

"Features"

07/14/2007

Legislative auditor questions payments, mileage and travel in former secretary of state's office.


By Bob Von Sternberg,
Star Tribune
July 13, 2007


During her final two years in office, former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer overpaid employees by $190,000, was personally overpaid for mileage reimbursement and asked to be reimbursed after traveling on 17 occasions when "the public purpose of the trip was not adequately identified."

That's the conclusion of the state legislative auditor's office in a routine report on the office's performance during 2005 and 2006, which was released Friday.

Kiffmeyer, a two-term Republican who lost reelection last November to DFLer Mark Ritchie, didn't return phone calls requesting a reaction to the audit.

In a letter appended to the audit, Ritchie wrote that his office would resolve the major findings of the audit by Aug. 1 and that other more minor findings already have been resolved.

In dollar terms, the most significant finding involved 16 department employees who were hired at a pay rate that exceeded their collective bargaining agreement by as much as $11 an hour, costing the state $160,000.

After a 17th employee was promoted, the employee was overpaid by $11,000.

Employee Relations Commissioner Patricia Anderson said Friday that her department hasn't figured out how to recover the money, a process complicated because some of the workers are no longer on the state payroll. Only six are still employed by the secretary of state's office.

"It's significant dollars," Anderson said. She added that some of the workers probably would have received authorization for the extra pay had the requests been put through the right channels. "For some it was justified, and for some it was not," she said.

Ritchie has been properly following procedures for submitting pay assignments to Anderson's office, she said.

In his letter to the legislative auditor, Ritchie wrote that department officials under Kiffmeyer believed they didn't need the Employee Relations Department to sign off on pay-rate decisions. He also wrote that he has asked Anderson's office to review those decisions during the period covered by the audit.

As for Kiffmeyer's travels and mileage, the audit found that she had been overpaid an unspecified number of times by charging for trips from her home in Big Lake to destinations, instead of from her office on the State Capitol campus.

Six times, it concluded, she claimed reimbursement for the 52-mile trip from her home to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport instead of the 8-mile trip from the State Office Building to the airport. For six trips to the State Fairgrounds, she was reimbursed for a 47-mile trip instead of the 5-mile trip from her office to the fairgrounds.

Among the 17 occasions when Kiffmeyer traveled without making clear the public purpose were trips "between the airport and home, various receptions, celebrations and charity events," the audit found.


The Associated Press contributed to this report.