By George Volsky
georgevolsky@aol.com

Lori St. John, the city’s Chief Compliance Officer, who audits financial operations of all departments and who displays commendable predilection for ferreting petty cash errors, finds herself in her own financial/legal pickle: The payment of $800 by Coral Gables taxpayers for her attorney registration fee in the state of Colorado.   

The Colorado payment was made last month through a city Purchasing Card (P-Card), whose current use has been supposedly reduced to strictly controlled purchases tied to the city’s operational needs. The P-Card abuse became infamous two years ago by the disgraced former city manager David Brown, who at one time falsified city documents to cover up his payments for wine and whisky.  

Moreover, the $800 St. John payment appears to be a snub to a stern fiscal discipline admonishment reportedly made personally to key administration officials by City Manager Patrick Salerno. Salerno has urged his subordinates to save city financial resources to the maximum as Coral Gables fiscal obligations were increasing and revenues diminishing.

The city manager told the Gazette on Wednesday the fact it was an out-of-state license was the problem and St. John should have sought his office's approval for the expenditure. "Had it been a Florida license, it would have been a non-issue," said Salerno. The city manager added that after discussions with St. John, she repaid the city with a check for $800.

St. John works for Salerno. She is paid $86,300 a year and receives about $57,000 in benefits (proportionally among the largest in the city). She has one assistant; their offices are in  the SW 72nd Avenue city Public Works complex. Her division, part of the manager’s office, has a budget of $302,153.

City officials confirm that Coral Gables does pay to validate state licenses of professionals who must be annually recertified and thus able to exercise legally their city functions. They included two city attorneys, a number of engineers, accountants and others. 

St. John is now presumably a Florida Certified Public Accountant (she wasn’t one at the time of her April 2008 employment by Human Resources director Marjorie Adler), so updating her state CPA license would be routine. But paying for her “Colorado Attorney Registration,” as one city employee said, “is another ball of wax.”

According to city records (obtained under the Florida Statutes Sec. 119), Joe V. Rodriguez, Inventory Controller/Buyer in the Finance Department’s Procurement division, on Dec, 10, 2009 paid to the Colorado Supreme Court $800. Rodriguez logged the payment on Dec. 13, 2009 in his monthly account statement. That statement, and a “Colorado Attorney Registration Receipt,” are the only documents about the St. John transaction.

The Colorado receipt, which has St. John’s Post Office Box address in Conifer, Colo., states that the $800 payment consisted of $575 for “Prior Years Balance” and of $225 for “Current Registration Fees.” An official at the Colorado Supreme Court, in a telephone interview explained that the $575 included back payment fees for about two years and a fine for late payment. 

That explanation could indicate that St. John made Coral Gables pay for her Colorado attorney’s license, for which she was in arrears, when she wasn’t even employed by this Florida city.

Why, rather than going to two employees in Salerno’s office who have P-Cards, St. John went to Rodriguez (whose office is also at the SW 72nd Ave. building) and asked him to use his P-Card – a SunTrust Visa -  for the Colorado payment is still unclear.  Procurement rules specify that payments of the type Rodriguez made in the St. John case require a specific written request, or statement that a superior officer had authorized the transaction, which would be prior to December 10, 2009. None exists.

St. John is yet to return a telephone call with a request for comment.

Rodriguez’s supervisor, Michael Pounds, didn’t know of the $800 payment, nor did Pounds’ boss, Finance Director Don Nelson. When asked why Rodriguez did it, Pounds said that possibly it was a “neighborly” action because St. John’s office is located nearby.     

Several City Hall observers, asked about the St. John payment, voiced disbelief at such occurrence and expressed hope that Salerno would use the case to enforce even tighter fiscal discipline in the city. “I don’t know Lori St. John, and she might even be a good accountant,” one resident said, asking not to be named. “But if she wants to practice law in Colorado she should resign and pay the fee herself. The $800 payment was a total waste, unfortunately one of many in the city.”