What are the travel expense rules for public employees in Tarrant County? It depends
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Travel on the taxpayer’s dime
The Star-Telegram reviewed thousands of expense records for top government leaders in Fort Worth, Tarrant County, the school district and Tarrant Regional Water District, from business travel to club memberships.
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Fort Worth and Tarrant County’s local governments are all funded by taxpayer dollars, but the rules for travel spending and other expenses vary from one agency to the next.
A Star-Telegram analysis of more than 5,000 pages of expense records for top officials with the city of Fort Worth, the Fort Worth school district, Tarrant County and the Tarrant Regional Water District highlight a lack of uniformity in how the agencies monitor and document their employees’ expenses.
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That can make it difficult to hold government bodies accountable for their spending, according to Theodore Arapis, an associate professor in Villanova University’s public administration department.
“If a local government doesn’t have a specific protocol, then how can we say that you overspent? Then it becomes very, very subjective,” Arapis said.
That’s not to say there aren’t any overarching rules at all — for instance, the per diem rate for travelers is set federally, and a mileage reimbursement rate is set by the IRS. And the state auditors’ office has the power to investigate complaints against any entity receiving state funds, though that intervention would come after the money had already been spent.
On the state level, the comptroller’s office monitors the spending and expenses of each state employee regardless of their department. But on the local level, each agency creates and enforces its own spending rules. And locally, that means significant differences among the policies.
For instance, Tarrant County’s travel policy requires out-of-state travel to be pre-approved by the elected county commissioners court. The water district’s and the city’s travel policies do not require any specific trips to go before their elected bodies; expenses are instead approved by internal staff.
And while travel forms for Kent Scribner, the Fort Worth schools superintendent, are approved by a financial officer, the water district and city follow an inverted chain of command for their respective top official.
Documents show that Dan Buhman, while he was the second-in-command at the water district, was approving expenses for Jim Oliver, then his boss. Similarly, the city’s travel policy designates an assistant city manager to approve travel expenses for city manager David Cooke.
The county handles things differently: documents show that G.K. Maenius, the county administrator, approves his own travel reimbursement requests.
The specificity of the travel policies varies, too. The city of Fort Worth has a 20-page travel policy for employees, while the county’s policy is eight pages and the water district’s is five pages. The school district’s internal travel policy, posted online, is a single page.
Buhman and Maenius said that different agencies may have different travel and expense needs, making it logical to have different policies.
“When you look at governments, like county governments and city governments, we’re totally different,” Maenius said. “We don’t provide some of the same services, we’re not structured the same way, and school districts are even more different. And so those administrators or chief executives ... have to just simply see what’s best for the organization.”
Cooke, Fort Worth’s city manager, said it would be difficult to write specific procedures that apply to vastly different groups of employees.
“I am a believer in the flexibility, but you still have to meet a value system and a set of principles,” Cooke said. “It’s hard to write a rule for every circumstance in every department, so you count on judgment and broad principles.”
Cooke said that, for him, public spending comes down to one rule of thumb.
“You can spend on anything you’re willing to read about in the newspaper,” he said.
This story was originally published March 6, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
