By JEFFREY McMURRAY, Associated Press Writer Jeffrey Mcmurray, Associated Press Writer – Thu Feb 26, 4:32 am ET
LEXINGTON, Ky. – A small commercial airport in Kentucky — and the taxpayers who support it — picked up top executives' tabs in recent years for Hannah Montana concert tickets, Nintendo Wii video game bundles and even a $4,400 strip club check, according to a state auditor's report.
The report released Wednesday outlines indulgences ranging from pricey electronics and exercise equipment to lavish meals and champagne. In three years, officials tallied more than $500,000 in questionable personal expenses.
Kentucky Auditor Crit Luallen said the former executive director at Lexington's Blue Grass Airport created a culture of wasteful spending so vast, employees sometimes were paid twice for the same expense and used airport credit cards as if they were personal checkbooks.
"I don't think we have ever seen an audit where so many different individuals involved in the management of a public agency abused the trust with such arrogance and lack of ethical standards," she said.
Former executive director Michael Gobb, once praised for his leadership in the wake of the 2006 Comair plane crash at the airport that killed 49 people, resigned amid the spending probe.
Luallen says she has forwarded the case to the Kentucky attorney general, the U.S. attorney's office and the FBI. Attorney General Jack Conway called the audit "troubling" and said his office and the federal government would jointly decide whether to pursue criminal charges. Kyle Edelen, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, said he had no comment.
Calls to Gobb's attorney, Bill Rambicure, were not immediately returned.
"It's difficult to find the strong enough adjectives to describe the scandal: outrageous, appalling, unbelievable," said Jim Gray, Lexington's vice mayor. "It's the age of Madoff, and we have similar behaviors and patterns clearly under way here."
The questionable spending was first reported by the Lexington Herald-Leader, which initially focused on high-dollar business trips at luxury resorts and then found even more vivid examples of runaway spending at an airport that is partly supported by taxpayers.
Although the audit only covered the past three years, it does refer to one of the more glaring examples reported by the Herald-Leader: a $4,400 charge Gobb and two other directors incurred at a Dallas strip club in 2004.
The charge, which appeared on the credit card statement of the airport's director of planning, was listed as going to Millennium Restaurant. The word "marketing" was handwritten next to the amount. The Associated Press obtained that receipt and others through an open records request.
Among other expenses revealed by the audit:
• $1,606 for tickets to six Broadway shows, including "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels."
• $168 at a gentlemen's club.
• $702 for champagne at a Las Vegas bar.
• More than $2,300 for four shotguns.
• $4,700 for an overnight trip to Atlanta.
The audit found airport employees also used the coffers for tuxedos and other expensive clothing; more than 400 DVDs — many of them currently missing — for the internal airport library; $14,000 in holiday hams given out as gifts; and $7,400 for a NASCAR driving experience excursion for staff described as "team building."
The airport's board of directors pinned most of the blame on Gobb in its response to the auditor's report, and voted Wednesday to approve more than 100 procedural changes Luallen suggested.
More than 92 percent of the things Gobb charged to his airport card lacked proper documentation, Luallen said.
While Luallen acknowledged Gobb was responsible for the free-spending culture, she said the board and its accounting firm should have supervised more closely.
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State Auditor's office:
http://www.auditor.ky.gov/Public/Home.asp
Blue Grass Airport:
http://www.bluegrassairport.com/
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090226/...rport_spending
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