A tense exchange among members of the Macon Water Authority about spending policy led to its executive director cutting up his purchasing card during Thursday’s meeting.
“For folks who are concerned about me using a p-card, I don’t need it,” MWA President Ron Shipman said as he took scissors to a credit card.
After a news article blasted executive expense reports for so-called “swanky trips” while raising rates, MWA District 2’s Desmond Brown called for a review of the purchasing card “do’s and don’ts” in the wake of the out-of-town publication’s story.
After Shipman sliced his card in two, Brown said, “Would have been nice for you to do that before the news media (report),” Brown said.
Shipman emailed board members the April 2019 policy that set a $499.99 limit on the 37 purchasing cards distributed to staff, but explained in the meeting that he informally changed that policy that he said was being abused before he arrived.
“The more interesting fact is, when I took this job, my P-card limit was five times less than my predecessors, with an ‘s.’ Five times less,” Shipman said.
When the former Georgia Power executive joined the Macon Water Authority in late 2022, he found the purchasing card policy was inadequate and being abused with staff waiting several months to file expenses and not being specific about the reasons for the spending, he said.
He now requires information on the “who, what, why, when and where” of each expense, he said.
The spending limit also kept them from effectively doing the job especially during emergencies when crews needed equipment immediately with no time to wait for the requisition process to buy items $500 and over, he said.
“You couldn’t follow the policy and do the work,” Shipman said. “Because if you read in that policy, it says then you have to go and get a requisition and a (purchase order) and all of that kind of stuff. And it’s going to take a little bit of time in order to do that, in order to stop the water from flowing.”
Brown replied, “We have a policy for a reason.”
He called for an investigation looking into potential abuse in every purchasing card charge over the past five years, but did not have support of the Finance Committee.
“Amazing,” Brown replied.
Shipman said he has nothing to hide.
“Audits, I welcome them. Inspections, I welcome them, because under me you won’t find it, but I’m afraid to find out what came before me,” he said.
Finance Committee Chairman Dwight Jones questioned the value of spending money on an external investigation, and wondered if anyone could be held accountable for violations since Shipman had altered the policy.
“I think there’s a 100% chance you’re gonna find everybody violated it, from what I’m hearing,” Jones said.
Brown was adamant that the 2019 policy is the only one in effect, and that employees’ signatures on expense forms show they were aware of that policy.
“It’s written in black and white,” Brown said. “They chose to disregard the policy that was set forth by the board of the Macon Water Authority… and it got blurted out (in the media), and so because it’s brought this attention, now we must address it and deal with swiftly any infractions that was done by the abuse of these cards.”
Jones agreed with Brown that the board should have oversight on the purchasing card policy. The Finance Committee agreed to have board members submit suggestions to legal counsel Jay Strickland, who will work with the administration to come up with a policy to submit to the board.
District 1’s Elaine Lucas, who is not on the finance committee, questioned having Shipman involved in the redrafting process, which she called inadequate.
“It is highly irregular for a person who is one of the violators to be a part of redoing and I just, I don’t understand how it just comes back to the president and executive director to rewrite something that he’s violating,” Lucas said. “It hides the fact that you’re going to put the fox in the hen house.”
Macon-Bibb Commissioner Bill Howell, who also sits on the Authority, said let Shipman do his job.
“I’m not sure what the witch hunt here is,” said Howell, who acknowledged Shipman’s efforts in tackling other more pressing issues. “If you had 10 problems when you took this job, I put this down around 10 or 12 on top of all the other stuff we had to deal with. So to me, this is not a huge problem, and I don’t see why we’re making it a major issue at this time.”
Since the first of the year, board meetings have been uncharacteristically contentious with members talking over one another and refusing to stop speaking when others have the floor.
Lucas has suggested the board go on a retreat organized by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government to go over board governance issues and rules of order.
Shipman said he will schedule a conference as soon as a representative is available.
District 4’s Frank Patterson, the longest serving member of the board, called out the behavior in recent meetings and vouched for Shipman and the MWA’s Assistant Executive Director Michel Wanna, who files multiple expense reports for staff training and conferences.
“I’ve been here since 2004, and y’alls’ integrity is not to be questioned. Your honesty and the way y’all do things is nothing but for the Water Authority. And I didn’t want anybody to get the wrong idea the way some things come over. I don’t want to be embarrassed by questioning somebody’s integrity,” Patterson said. “I’m proud of this board and the business that we try to take care of, and hopefully we’ll leave personal things out of the future meetings. Some of these meetings here lately, I’ve been flat-tailed embarrassed about how they were conducted.”
— Civic Journalism Senior Fellow Liz Fabian covers Macon-Bibb County government entities for The Macon Newsroom and can be reached at [email protected] or 478-301-2976.
