HOUSTON – Exactly who is to blame for the credit card scandal in the Houston Independent School District?

Should we blame the employees who misused their district-issued “procurement cards” – including some who reportedly misspent money that was supposed to be earmarked for needy students?

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Or should the finger be pointed at Houston school district officials who foolishly issued the cards to 1,300 employees, then essentially invited abuse by failing to review purchases in a timely manner?

The answer is obviously “all of the above.”

ABC13.com reported in August 2016 that “hundreds” of Houston Intermediate School District employees have been “abusing or misusing their district-issued procurement cards, according to an internal audit.”

The audit found that card-holders were guilty of the following, according to the news report:

  • Making $11,770 worth of purchases for “food, entertainment and gifts” with money that was “earmarked for low-income kids.”
  • Making 541 purchases for a total of $181,885 from “prohibited or restricted vendors.” That means the cards were used at various establishments that were not under contract to do business with the school district.
  • Making 10 transactions, totaling more than $5,000, that “correspond to a misappropriation of funds/personal transactions.”

Some of the card abusers were aware they were breaking the spending rules, and attempted to hide their abuse. There is a $1,000 limit on individual transactions using district procurement cards, but some abusers simply broke larger purchases into several smaller purchases.

For instance, one employee rang up an astonishingly high $4,000 restaurant tab, then asked the restaurant to break the total up into separate transactions that fell under the limit, the news report said.

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“That person is just dishonest,” one member of the school audit committee was quoted as saying about the employee with the restaurant tab.

While so many employees were making improper purchases, the Houston district was not properly reviewing card usage. As a result, the district recently ran up a huge $584,400 procurement card bill, the news report said.

As the audit noted, the lack of timely review of card purchases increased the “risk of fraud and misuse of funds.”

None of this should be terribly surprising.

In 2009, an investigation by TexasWatchdog.com revealed that 18 Houston school district employees had been issued school credit cards after filing for bankruptcy, many for having huge unpaid credit card bills.

That included a transportation supervisor who had more than $23,000 in credit card debt, an office clerk who owed more than $30,000 and a school psychologist who owed $64,147, according to news reports.

A procurement card was also issued to an elementary school secretary who, along with her husband, owed $77,000 to the Internal Revenue Service.

The people who run the Houston school district have obviously not been careful about vetting the people they trust with procurement cards, or monitoring their spending habits.

Taxpayers and students are the ones being shortchanged.