According to a statement from Subadan, the City of South Fulton is unwavering in its dedication to operational openness and fiscal stewardship.
According to the report on the city’s P-card program, South Fulton has a good policy, but there isn’t a system in place to hold people accountable for breaking it, particularly elected officials.
It was discovered that P-cards were used for gifts and donations, as well as for meals, travel, and other transactions without the required approval or supervision. Additionally, it discovered 287 cases of missing receipts totaling $68,300 and ongoing card use after employee termination dates.
The forensic audit of Mayor Khalid Kamau’s spending was also made public this week by Baker Tilly. Kamau has been under intense heat this year for his dubious card transactions and international travel.
The city of South Fulton is credited.
The city of South Fulton is credited.
Local governments frequently employ P-card systems as a cost-effective means of making modest transactions, but without stringent controls, they can be abused, according to Baker Tilly.
The forensic audit of Kamau’s spending examined almost 700 purchases made using the mayor’s P-card between March 10, 2023, and January 28 of this year, totaling $109,209, and discovered multiple infractions of the city’s travel and P-card laws.
These include a non-city employee’s failure to obtain the necessary permissions for travel and pay for a journey to Bogota, Colombia. Three transactions for an unapproved Penn State foreign exchange student’s trip from Bogota, Colombia, are also mentioned in the audit.
The mayor’s expenses included a conference in Washington, D.C.; two business trips to Colombia; a trip to Rwanda; the Olympics in Paris, France; a Pride event in D.C.; the Toronto Film Festival in Canada; and a 21-day journey to Ghana in western Africa.
In the past, Kamau has described trips to Ghana and Colombia as commercial missions.
The audit notes that an elected official’s travel must be approved by the city manager or city clerk in accordance with the city’s travel policy.
It further states that there is no proof that this was done for any of the mayor’s trips.
According to the audit, the clerk or city manager must approve any out-of-state travel by elected officials that costs more than $1,500.
According to the audit, $459 in per diems were given to the mayor in one case concerning a scheduled trip to Ethiopia in November 2024. According to the report, the trip was canceled, but it seems the mayor did not reimburse the city.
Kamau stated in a text message on Thursday that “my budget is the only one this council voted to spend $55,000 extra to do a forensic audit for, on top of $75,000 for a general audit,” despite the fact that numerous members of the City Council have taken taxpayer-funded trips abroad.
