By Adam Pagnucco.
A new report by Montgomery County Inspector General Megan Davey Limarzi has found that MCPS employees “received 1,622 citations while driving MCPS vehicles” between July 1, 2015 and January 24, 2023. School system purchase cards were used to pay $148,528 in citations. Some but not all of these costs were reimbursed by the offending employees.
In addition to the total number of citations (averaging roughly 18 per month), the OIG found the following.
School buses were frequently cited for school bus arm violations.
Under Maryland state law, it’s illegal for drives to pass stopped buses with their stop arms extended under most circumstances. The OIG found 330 citations of school buses for school bus stop arm violations, which accounted for 85% of all MCPS vehicle violations in this category. The OIG wrote:
We viewed recordings associated with 17 randomly selected school bus stop arm citations, and although we did not observe drivers acting recklessly, we did witness them passing stopped school buses who had deployed stop arms. Given the level of training bus drivers receive, the number of citations is alarming.
The OIG also found 402 citations of school buses for speed camera violations and 275 citations of school buses for red light camera violations.
MCPS “lacks written policies or procedures governing the management of citations throughout the agency.”
MCPS had some standards on citations for individual departments and drivers but not for the agency as a whole. The school system’s transportation department’s manual “establishes that violations of traffic laws are subject to discipline, but does not explain how traffic citations should be processed or state who is responsible for paying citations.”
School system purchase cards are used to pay citations.
MCPS allows the use of purchase cards (P-Cards) to buy items that “are not on a bid list and cost $500 or less.” These P-Cards are often used to pay traffic citations. Payments are handled by the school system’s transportation department, which seeks reimbursement from offending employees unless it determines that they are not at fault or they leave employment before it is notified of the citation. However, the transportation department told the OIG that it is unable to force other MCPS departments to pay for their citations, resulting in overdue citations totaling $2,269.90 over the last three fiscal years.
Additionally, some offending employees paid their citation costs directly to the police department, resulting in duplicate payments.
The OIG wrote:
We analyzed MCPS P-Card information and found that $148,528 was charged to DOT [Department of Transportation] P-Cards to pay for vehicle citations. We reviewed P-Card policy and determined that the payment of traffic citations using the P-Card is not prohibited, however, the lack of policies and procedures for handling citations in general has led to duplicate payments and failure to collect reimbursements from responsible parties; meaning taxpayer dollars are used incorrectly used to pay for traffic citations.
MCPS’s response was a non-response.
MCPS Chief Operating Officer M. Brian Hull wrote a response which was included in the report. Hull noted that P-Cards have been “used within proper use guidelines” to pay citations, that MCPS was “successful in recouping the majority of monies from MCPS employees who are responsible for the violations,” that “training and development of bus drivers is strictly adhered to” under state rules and regulations and that violations are addressed through the staff code of conduct.
That displeased the OIG, which wrote:
Mr. Hull’s response does not address the OIG’s concern that MCPS lacks written policies or procedures governing the management of citations throughout the agency, and that an absence of formal policy caused processing errors, resulted in unpaid reimbursements by employees, and contributed to duplicate payments. The response also does not address the OIG’s recommendation that MCPS should evaluate the underlying causes of citations received by employees and take steps to remediate contributing factors. MCPS’s adherence to bus driver training and development requirements was not a part of this investigation.
So what happens now? Will the school board or the county council order MCPS to improve its management of this issue? Or will each of them claim that they lack the authority to do that?
The OIG’s full report can be found here.