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Broward investigates alleged scheme by transit officials to hide buses from federal DOT auditors

A Broward County Transit bus.

By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org

Two Broward transit workers fired last month for payroll fraud were allegedly part of a scheme last June to help county transit officials hide buses from auditors of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

An anonymous county worker tipped federal officials to a bus cover-up on Jan. 28, shortly after the county auditor’s office announced it had determined that Transit Superintendent Jeffrey Scott had wrongly altered timekeeping records for multiple employees, including Clifford Combs, resulting in excess pay for hours not worked, including overtime. Florida Bulldog obtained a printout of the tip that was made on a fraud hotline.

The federal Office of Personnel Management relayed the tip to county officials a week before Scott and Combs were terminated on Feb. 13, following additional investigation by County Administrator Bertha Henry. News of that possible motive behind the fraud involving Broward Transit officials, however, was never made public.

The county’s office of Professional Standards and the auditor’s office are now investigating.

Professional Standards, which received the tip from the Broward Inspector General’s office, is responsible for ensuring that county agencies and employees comply with county policies, procedures and ordinances and federal and state laws. Section boss Priscilla Coq did not return phone messages over several days seeking comment.

Here’s what Deputy Inspector General Michael Mee said in a Feb. 19 letter transferring the matter to Professional Standards.

“The Broward Office of the Inspector General (OIG) received an anonymous tip alleging misconduct within Broward County Transit, to include bus operators being paid overtime in June 2018 to drive buses to Fleet Services on Blount Road in order to hide the buses from auditors from the United States Department of Transportation,” Mee wrote.

County Auditor reviewing

Independent County Auditor Bob Melton said in a Friday interview that his office recently got its own tip about the bus cover-up directly from an anonymous caller and is looking into it.

“The situation of hiding buses is an allegation we did receive and are currently reviewing,” Melton said. “From our standpoint, that situation was not related to the overtime situation. We are nowhere near issuing a report on that.” He did not elaborate.

Broward Transportation Department Director Chris Walton

Broward Transportation Director Chris Walton did not respond to questions emailed on Friday. A spokeswoman explained Tuesday afternoon that he was very busy and did not have time to answer before deadline.

Why would Broward County Transit (BCT) want to keep federal auditors away from its buses?

Federal grants pay 100 percent of the cost for buses that the county and many other local governments purchase. [Local funds, fare revenues and state and federal funds – in that order – provide the bulk of transit’s operating funds, according to U.S. DOT statistics.] Funds are apportioned by formulas based on population, transit ridership, the number of passenger miles traveled and other data.

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) handles oversight, requiring evaluations and independent audits to determine whether recipients like Broward County have met program requirements and are in compliance with federal laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“FTA may reduce or withdraw financial assistance as a result of review findings or withhold further grants until the grantee comes into compliance,” the agency warns in a circular about its bus grant program.

A problematic counting system

Knowledgeable county insiders point to the long-troubled automatic bus passenger counting (APC) system as one costly apparatus that Broward County Transit may not be keen on having scrutinized.

Nine years ago, BCT was roiled by a whistleblower’s allegations of corruption and wasted public funds regarding the award of a multi-million dollar no-bid contract to a North Carolina company, Digital Recorders, Inc. (DRI), that sold communications equipment for buses. The whistleblower also told authorities that transit officials authorized the payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars to DRI for an automatic bus passenger counting system that didn’t work. The counters were installed on more than 150 buses – about half the fleet.

The allegations triggered at least two investigations by Professional Standards. The first looked at the initial 55 county buses with APCs. The units cost more than $470,000 to install, yet failed a final acceptance test. The second inquiry focused on another 98 buses with the APC system, but most of them weren’t reporting data either, the whistleblower’s complaint said.

Florida Bulldog unsuccessfully sought access to files of those investigations sporadically for years – and was repeatedly told they were not available for public inspection because inquiries were continuing. At one point, the documents were said to have been transferred to the Broward Inspector General’s Office while it investigated. In late January 2019, however, Professional Standards granted access. Missing from the files were the final reports of the investigators, and, apparently, numerous supporting documents.

Copies of emails contained in the file, however, provide some background about the investigation.

A boss without answers

Most noteworthy were Transit chief Chris Walton’s responses to questions posed by Professional Standards investigator A. Joy Stewart. Walton repeatedly said he didn’t know the answers and could provide no requested documentation , sometimes referring Stewart to underlings.

“Typically, as Department Director, I am not involved in the detail information that you are looking for,” he wrote to Stewart in August 2011. Walton apparently made no effort to obtain answers to the investigator’s questions.

That same month, Maurice “Skip” Gill, BCT’s information systems manager, told Stewart that 161 fixed route buses had automatic passenger counters installed and that about 125 were downloading daily data to the APC server. Stewart asked Gill what percentage of that data was accurate. Gill vouched for the system, saying that when everything was working correctly “the data appears to be accurate.” More telling, however, was Gill’s acknowledgement that none of the county’s APC data had been certified as accurate and that it was not used when reporting data to the National Transit Database.

Another BCT official, Harold Tutt, provided Stewart with a brief history of the county’s use of automatic passenger counters. “Installation of APC began in 2006 with DRI (Digital Recorders Inc.). DRI used INFODEV as their subcontractor. Early contracts specified DRI only. Later purchases were specified as INFODEV to ensure consistency within the fleet,” Tutt wrote. INFODEV EDI is a Canadian company that develops and installs passenger and people counters.

An INFODEV graphic showing how automatic passenger counters work.

Investigator Stewart, a lawyer, is currently senior counsel for Broward’s transit department. She said Tuesday that she no longer recalls the details of her 2011-2012 investigation.

Records show that in 2014, the county commission in a 9-0 vote awarded a $12.5 million, seven-year deal to Baltimore-based Integrated Systems Research Corporation (ISR) for a computer-aided dispatch/Automatic Vehicle Locator System to manage its bus fleet. That included interfacing with existing onboard systems like the APC, from which it would upload data that could be provided to federal overseers. The project was 100 percent federally-funded.

But sources say the APC still does not work properly, with transit officials sometimes requiring  workers to sit on buses for hours and manually count passengers.

It is against that backdrop that the county commission voted last month go out for bids again in search of new automatic passenger counters “which will enable Transit Division to effectively collect ridership data and related reports.” The bid period opened Feb. 13. Five prospective bidders, including a representative of ISR, appeared at a Feb. 28 pre-bid meeting along with a half-dozen county officials. But bidding was shut down early on March 6 without explanation.

According to bid documents, Broward has 352 buses in its fleet and transit officials want to install APCs on 140 buses, with an option for an additional 30 buses. Once again, Uncle Sam will pay 100 percent of the estimated cost of $750,000.

Commissioners voted 9-0 to go out to bid without hearing any public explanation from transit officials as to why new APCs are needed and how existing APCs have performed. The commissioners asked no questions.

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Latest comments

  • SURE DOESN’T COME AS A SURPRISE TO ME. CHRIS WALTON SEEMS TO BE SURPRISED. LOL!

  • As a former employee…. This is just the too of th iceberg. The reality is way too complex. Why no one is checking why ISR os still contravted and payed. Project was supposed to be 18 months. In reality is more tham 60…. And the equipment is not working as expected or…. at all. How many times we can see buses without out external or internal signage. And who pay for this….. the customers the government. And much more

  • Broward County Transit…who stole the strawberries?

  • As always at bct nothing works but nobody ever pays attention employees that complain. Check out Chris Walton and how many that he’s bought in the past 18 yrs that have not worked. Miss Stewart who did the investigation in 2011now works directly for Chris Walton.

  • Then there are those stories about Chris Walton receiving a condo in North Carolina as payment for giving a multi million dollar contract to a company who’s counting equipment would need to be maintained by the manufacturer for a decade.
    The Men & Women of Transit know the Truth. The Men & Women of Transit need to step up and be heard. Don’t be like The Port, and stay silent and watch the crime.
    As the say in the County, see something, say something.
    Open the flood gates. All the dirt. On Walton. And the rest of them, let it fly.

  • If it’s so wonderful now that the penny tax can support BCT, how come the buses are in huge need of parts that cannot be bought because of a supposed lack of money.
    Over 400 parts items on request but no monies to generate purchase orders?
    Sounds like there’s trouble in paradise.
    BCT paradise? There’s an oxymoron!
    Sure hope those parts aren’t for brakes or steering!

    Why would BCT take a new bus, #1830, and send it back to the manufacturer to have a perfectly efficient air conditioning system removed in order to install a high priced per performing system?
    Sounds suspicious but then again, it’s only taxpayer money.

  • Follow the money… investigate the investigators !

  • How does someone hide a 40foot long bus ? I’ve heard of hide and go seek but that’s incredible!!! Nice to see bct is having fun with taxpayers funds

  • Something smells bad between Mr. Walton and ISR Transit.

  • Keep your mouth shut Gene

  • Keep your mouth shut Gene!!

  • I’ve always wondered why Jeff Scott & Clifford Combs weren’t arrested.
    Why they didn’t have to pay back the money they stole.
    And if Jeff Scott got to keep his pension (he was vested).

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