Tulsa's city auditor says she has several concerns after reviewing an independent audit of the Tulsa County Jail's daily rate.
Auditor Cathy Criswell identified around $10 million she doesn't believe should count toward the daily rate calculation.
Mayor Dewey Bartlett plans to take Criswell's findings to county commissioners. He said one issue is $2.2 million in jail depreciation costs were included in the rate calculation, but the county owns the building, not the criminal justice authority.
"An expense is being billed to the City of Tulsa, essentially, or to the jail authority, that is not an expense that normally is charged to somebody leasing something, it's only charged or used for tax purposes to somebody that owns something," Bartlett said.
Criswell said audit firm BKD simply reported $178,000 from the jail fund were spent on cars for officers ranked sergeant or higher.
"What that's saying to me is, 'I'm a sergeant, I get a car,'" Criswell said. "That gets charged into the jail costs, and then there's no question about whether or not that person is actually assigned to the jail."
Criswell also said the county criminal justice authority gets no information about expenditures.
"Basically, they approve the budget. One-twelfth of it is transferred over to the sheriff, and then the TCCJA never sees the transactions in that fund again," Criswell said. "So that jail operations fund, anytime you see money coming out of that, that transaction is not presented in detail to the authority to be able to review it."
Bartlett says the criminal justice authority should have more oversight of the jail fund.
