'Ghost' van riders reappear at Hill Air Force Base

Copyright 2009 Deseret News

HILL AIR FORCE BASE — Maybe it's time to call an exorcist.

Auditors again have found that Hill Air Force Base is wasting money — about $130,000 a year this time — on "ghost riders" that it erroneously assumed are riding in Utah Transit Authority van pools to the base, or for actual van riders who are ineligible to receive vouchers. Base officials had proclaimed two years ago that they had fixed such problems.

But a new Air Force Audit Agency report written in September found, "The (van-pool) program manager purchased approximately 1,300 unneeded vouchers annually costing $130,000" for such "ghosts" and ineligible participants over a year period between April 2008 and March 2009. "This is a repeat finding," the report said.

That means about 10 percent of the $1.25 million spent at Hill through a federal program to pay for employees' van-pool vouchers is being wasted on "ghosts" who are actually not riding, including employees who moved or quit, or on other ineligible riders. That's according to the report obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

On the bright side, the problem now is a bit smaller than two years ago, when auditors said Hill was buying 1,560 vouchers a year for riders who were not in or were not eligible for van-pool vouchers.

At that time, Barbara Hanlin, director of manpower and personnel at the base, said problems had been corrected. "All ineligible individuals have been removed from the program, and an improved application process is now in place. The discrepancies have been corrected, and the audit is closed," she said then.

Earlier this year, auditors decided to check whether the corrections were working.

They wrote that they found the van-pool manager "improperly procured van-pool vouchers for 221 individuals no longer participating and paid for 112 individuals not authorized" to participate through applications to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The total vouchers purchased for them cost about $130,000 over a year.

Auditors said the mistake happened because the number of van-pool participants at the base is large — 1,200 people — and checking up on them can be time consuming.

Also, lists of eligible recipients from the DOT were available only in printed form, which made comparing them with lists of participants more difficult than if they were computerized. Also, the spellings of names varied in the lists of who is eligible and who is actually participating in van-pool programs.