Montana legislative audit finds 'slush fund'

Does your employer pay your hourly rate to go to the gym for three hours a week as part of your job? No, I didn’t think so. This is now happening at the Department of Military Affairs and was discovered during our most recent legislative audit.

Everyone wants their employees to be physically fit, especially in the military, but this goes beyond a requirement and is an employee’s choice. The only difference is we, the taxpayers, must pay for it.

The adjutant general defended the practice at a recent hearing, which most of us on the committee felt was indefensible. I even asked if they could do some calisthenics during their work day to come into compliance with the need to have a healthy workforce. As we soon found out, many of these employees aren’t in the field doing training but sit behind a desk.

We will see if this changes after our quarterly meeting. I shudder at the ramifications for the taxpayers if all executive branches made this part of the “wants” of the employee rather than the “needs” of the employee. It should stop before this becomes the norm and all state employees are paid to work out at the local gym even if it is the healthy thing to do.

I asked for a total of the expenses associated with paying these employees to go to the gym and was recently provided the figures: $644 per hour, $1,934 per week and as much as $100,562 per year. Is this acceptable to the taxpayers of the state? I hope not.

Another audit finding was the Department of Justice buying three SUVs without an appropriation for them, which must be vetted by the legislature. The Department of Administration took the money out of Senate Bill 410, which named the agencies which could have spending transferred. DOJ was not on the list.

This instance has the smell of a slush fund for the executive branch. Again, not appropriate. Many legislators will have less trust going into the 2015 legislative session after these kinds of things happened while we were out of town. This is one of the downsides of the Montana Legislature meeting every other year — we’re not able to keep an eye open to these types of transfers except for after-the-fact.

All agencies of state government are audited with blue book reports ready for public reading. Recent talk about the committee members meeting in secret and deciding things is just false. We can meet with the legislative auditor prior to the public meeting to ask questions about the blue book findings which cannot be changed.  

It can be tedious work reading the audit reports but interesting for those of us who want to know about the inner workings of state agencies. I like these reports, which don’t take sides and just state the facts. That’s how all government should work for Montanans. Rep. Randy Brodehl, R-Kalispell, was chairman during the interim and did a great job leading the charge.

As we head to the 2015 session, I urge you to contact me with questions or information while I’m in Helena. My contacts are online at http://leg.mt.gov.

Have a great Christmas season. I look forward to serving you again this session.

Sen. Dee Brown, R-Coram, represents Montana Senate District 2 and is a member of the Legislative Audit Committee.