An audit by the Office of the Inspector General released Feb. 16 found the city government paid about $1.8 million per year for 9,000 telephone lines that were not being used by the government or were being used by persons or institutions outside the government.

Random checks of city phone lines found a liquor store, a broadcasting company and a military base security force were using phone lines paid for by D.C. taxpayers. Officials would not identify any of these private companies.

"The major thing is to…put an end to these expenses," said Inspector General E. Barrett Prettyman.

Prettyman said his office did not investigate how these companies were able to use phone lines paid for by the city’s taxpayers. He would not say how many outside entities were found using government phone lines or identify them by name because he said they were found by spot check and a complete list was not compiled. He said he believes Bell Atlantic was not double charging for the use of these lines but rather that the phone users were not paying at all.

Bell Atlantic officials did not return phone calls for comment on how their company could have issued phone lines to private entities that were already assigned to the city government and then continued to bill the government for the service.

The extent of the practice and the length of time taxpayers have been picking up the tab for these private companies’ phone bills could not be determined from the inspector general’s audit or from discussions with government officials.

Prettyman’s comments were echoed by Chief Technology Officer Suzanne Peck.

"Our first focus will be to remove these lines to stop these charges," Peck said. She said the agency’s next priorities will be to establish policies to ensure unneeded phone lines are disconnected and unauthorized phone charges are not incurred by the government.

A spokesman for Interim Chief Financial Officer Earl Cabbell said finance officials will seek reimbursement from Bell Atlantic for the unused phone lines.

However, none of the city agencies directly involved in the issue would say whether they will investigate how companies unrelated to the city government secured phone lines paid for by the taxpayers.

The IG’s report also found that nearly a third of the phone lines assigned to the District government were not being used and that the government lost about $30,000 in an eight-month period to phone billing scams. The audit determined the government lost about $173,000 during the audit period, Jan. 4 through Aug. 4 of last year, because it failed to take advantage of a federal program that would have discounted long-distance phone calls.

The audit of the phone system also found the government paid about $781,000 in sales taxes from which it is exempt. Government officials said that because Bell Atlantic collects these taxes for the D.C. government, it is not clear that the government lost any money.

The audit was the second in a series of investigations the IG’s office has conducted on the D.C. government’s phone system. The first audit, issued in September of last year, covered the system’s internal controls.

Copyright 1999, The Common Denominator