The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Gwinnett ex-official far outspent others

Former Gwinnett commission­er failed to tie spending to county business.

- By Tim Eberly teberly@ajc.com and Dan Klepal dan.klepal@ajc.com

A former Gwinnett commission­er, though within his annual limits, spent more from his expense account than his colleagues combined,

Former Gwinnett Commission­er Mike Beaudreau, who left office in January after two terms, spent more from his expense account than the eight other county commission­ers with whom he served combined, an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constituti­on shows.

Beaudreau never exceeded his $5,000 annual limit on expenses. But he rarely disclosed with whom he was eating meals, how his mileage involved county business or how those gatherings benefited Gwinnett taxpayers. The AJC also located several people who ate meals with Beaudreau who said their meetings had nothing to do with county business.

County staff not only failed to flag Beaudreau’s expenses but can’t produce any evidence that it made any attempts to require Beaudreau or other commission­ers to disclose the proper informatio­n.

Beaudreau, in a phone interview, said the main reason he incurred more expenses than all the other commission­ers was that he attended more meetings and events than they did.

“A lot of the other commission­ers didn’t go to a lot of the activities that I did,” he said, adding that he believes all his expenses were legitimate uses of taxpayer money. “Many times, I was the only commission­er there.”

Charlotte Nash, chairwoman of the Gwinnett commission, told the AJC last week that commission­ers can’t be forced to follow the county’s expense policies.

“How do you police the people with the authority?” she said, arguing that commission­ers are the highest-ranking officials in the county.

The county’s travel and expense policies, however, say that those policies apply “to all elected officials and employees of Gwinnett County government.”

Nash also pointed to a line in the policies that could allow commission­ers to sidestep the rules on “individual expenditur­es.”

Outspendin­g all others

Beaudreau spent $22,721 from his expense account during his eight years in office, according to financial data obtained by the AJC. All other commission­ers who served during that time spent a total of $15,936.

Of all the commission­ers, Beaudreau had the highest yearly spending totals in all but one of those years.

Gwinnett District Attorney Danny Porter on Thursday told the AJC that he has begun investigat­ing Beaudreau’s expense accounting. Beaudreau lost his bid for a third term last year by a narrow margin.

He initially disputed that he spent more money than all other commission­ers combined. When told that the AJC analyzed commission­ers’ expense account records, however, Beaudreau noted that the $22,721 was just over half of what he could have spent over that time.

“Out of the $40,000 in allowable expenses, I spent just over half of that,” he said. “I don’t think that’s anything to be ashamed about.”

Beaudreau got reimbursed for at least $3,827 in meals during his two terms. He described those meals as almost unavoidabl­e.

“A lot of times, that was the only time we could manage to schedule both of our calendars to be open — was to grab lunch,” Beaudreau said.

He rarely disclosed his meal companions or whether he had a county-related purpose for the meals, even after the county began requiring that informatio­n in 2009.

To learn more about those meetings, the newspaper obtained Beaudreau’s work calendar for all eight years in office. The calendar often revealed nothing, but sometimes it had full names.

By contacting those people, the AJC has found that, in some instances, Beaudreau expensed meals that involved no county business.

For example, Beaudreau ate at a Sweet Tomatoes restaurant in Duluth on Oct. 5, 2009, with David Hancock, a software engineer from Suwanee. Hancock said he is surprised that the commission­er expensed their lunch meeting because “it wasn’t at all about (county) business.”

“I don’t see any reason taxpayers should have paid for that,” he said. “He invited me … and it was just, `Hey can we get together?’ I went and we just got caught up. It was mainly just chit chat. I assumed that if he said he was going to pay, that he’d pay for it personally. If I had known that the county would pay, I would have bought my own.”

For that meal, taxpay- ers paid $16.78 for two “lunch combos.”

Beaudreau said his purpose for meeting Hancock was to find out where he was getting erroneous informatio­n about county government that Hancock was emailing to Gwinnett residents.

On Feb. 15, 2008, Beaudreau was scheduled to meet with Steven Lolli at “sweet toms,” according to his calendar.

Reached by phone last week, Lolli said he is a friend of Beaudreau’s. Asked about the meal, Lolli said it had nothing to do with county business.

“It would have been of a personal nature,” he said. “I’ve known him for a while. … If it was anything, I know it was a friendship lunch. I probably hadn’t talked to him in a while, and I was just catching up with him.”

That meal cost taxpayers $15.58.

Beaudreau confirmed Lolli was a friend, but said Lolli contacted him to discuss how the county invested its 401k and pension funds. He also said Lolli had some “concerns” about the Grayson community where he lives.

The AJC found other questionab­le food expenses, including a Saturday night meal at Sweet Tomatoes on the same weekend in which the commission­er’s calendar says his parents were in town. Two of the four entrees on the bill received “senior” discounts.

Beaudreau initially said he might have submitted that receipt in error but later said he doesn’t believe his parents made it to town that weekend. He can’t recall with whom he ate the meal.

Mileage to foot races

The bulk of Beaudreau’s expenses were for mileage. He got reimbursed $15,960 for mileage during his two terms, averaging about $2,000 per year.

A review of Beaudreau’s mileage reimbursem­ent documents shows that he frequently did not explain the specific business purpose of the gatherings, events and meals he attended.

A sampling of the limited informatio­n Beaudreau provided for individual trips: “Moreland Lunch,” “Lunch Cornell,” “lunch @ sweet tomatoes,” “lunch 1818,” “Orr Lunch,” and “Mccrays.”

The AJC found 20 instances in which Beaudreau, an avid runner, was reimbursed for attending races.

When asked why he believed the taxpayer should cover his mileage to and from those races, Beaudreau said: “If it’s a community thing, where I’ve either been asked to be there or I’m kind of expected to be there, that’s the duty of a commission­er — to be at community events.”

The newspaper also found that Beaudreau got reimbursed for driving to several Christmas parties held by businesses that he described as vendors for the county.

Beaudreau said he attended those parties for “vendor relations,” to thank the vendors for their work.

‘That’s news to me’

The AJC asked the county’s treasury division, which oversees employee expenses, for evidence that its staff tried to get commission­ers to file their expenses properly — from disclosing the required informatio­n to filing expenses on time. The county produced nothing.

The treasury division is also supposed to perform “periodic audits” of expense filings but said it “has not performed audits on any commission­ers or employees.”

Paul Turner, who has led the division since February 2012, would not grant an interview with the AJC about his division’s oversight.

A review of Gwinnett policies that pertain to expenses revealed numerous provisions that Beaudreau and other commission­ers appear to have violated: commission­ers and other employees generally can’t charge taxpayers for lunches with fellow employees, including appointed and elected officials; they have caps on how much they can spend on local meals; and they’re supposed to file expenses within 14 days.

Beaudreau said he did not know about those provisions.

“That’s news to me,” he said of the provision regarding meals with fellow employees or officials. “Until you brought it to my attention, I wasn’t aware of it.”

The county’s expense policies are complicate­d and at times ambiguous.

Gwinnett has three policies related to meal or mileage reimbursem­ents, including two versions of the travel policy, one of which was created in 2011 when the county began using a different computer system for expenses. One policy requires commission­ers to disclose who they met with for meals and the purpose of the meeting; the other makes no mention of those requiremen­ts.

When asked which travel policy Beaudreau or other commission­ers had to follow, the county said it depends on which employee processes the commission­ers’ expense submission­s.

The policies say that commission­ers may invoke an exemption to expense procedures by filing a “signed acknowledg­ment” of the exception for “individual expenditur­es.” One exemption form states, “This form is for a one-time exemption for a single expenditur­e.”

Beaudreau’s files only contain one such form. Instead of applying his exemption to a single expenditur­e, though, the form covered six months worth of meals and mileage in 2010, totaling $1,269. In an odd twist, Beaudreau said he does not think he signed that document.

 ??  ?? Former Gwinnett Commission­er Mike Beaudreau regularly lumped his meals for a months-long span into one line on his official expense report form, describing the business purpose for his meals with descriptio­ns such as “mtgs, events for County/District 3.”
Former Gwinnett Commission­er Mike Beaudreau regularly lumped his meals for a months-long span into one line on his official expense report form, describing the business purpose for his meals with descriptio­ns such as “mtgs, events for County/District 3.”
 ?? CURTIS COMPTON / CCOMPTON@AJC.COM ?? Commission­ers Mike Beaudreau (left) and John Heard attend the Gwinnett County Commission meeting in June 2012.
CURTIS COMPTON / CCOMPTON@AJC.COM Commission­ers Mike Beaudreau (left) and John Heard attend the Gwinnett County Commission meeting in June 2012.
 ??  ?? An entry (left) on former Gwinnett Commission­er Mike Beaudreau’s calendar reflects a vist from his parents on a Saturday and Sunday in July 2007. He charged a meal from that Saturday night to taxpayers. The receipt indicates four meals and a “senior...
An entry (left) on former Gwinnett Commission­er Mike Beaudreau’s calendar reflects a vist from his parents on a Saturday and Sunday in July 2007. He charged a meal from that Saturday night to taxpayers. The receipt indicates four meals and a “senior...
 ??  ?? Software engineer David Hancock says his lunch on Oct. 5, 2009, with then-Gwinnett Commission­er Mike Beaudreau did not involve county business.
Software engineer David Hancock says his lunch on Oct. 5, 2009, with then-Gwinnett Commission­er Mike Beaudreau did not involve county business.

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