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Hillsborough Elections Office Audit Raises Spending Questions

News Channel 8 file photo by ERIC HAUSMANN

Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson asked the county recently for $2.3 million to cover cost overruns.

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By MIKE SALINERO

msalinero@tampatrib.com

Published: December 24, 2008

TAMPA - About $1.4 million appropriated last year for new voting machines was instead spent on personnel costs in Hillsborough County's elections supervisor Buddy Johnson's office, according to the county's budget director.

Citing information from an ongoing outside audit, county budget director Eric Johnson said the elections office still owes about $1.7 million to Premier Election Solutions, the company that supplied optical scan voting machines used in this year's primary and general elections.

"They signed a contract last year which suggested they have a payment for election machines due in fiscal '09," the budget director said. "It appears they spent most of it in fiscal '08."

If the information is correct, it explains why Johnson asked the county recently for $2.3 million to cover cost overruns. Johnson's chief deputy, Kathy Harris, told commissioners last week the money was to cover unexpected costs related to high turnout for the Nov. 4 general election.

However, Eric Johnson said Harris e-mailed him a spreadsheet hours before the commission meeting that showed $1.4 million in "unplanned costs" last year. In other words, money she was requesting for the fiscal 2008-09 budget was spent a year earlier.

"If they had a contractual obligation to pay $1.7 million this year as they told the auditors, it doesn't appear they made any plans to pay those bills," Eric Johnson said.

Buddy Johnson, replying to a phone message, sent an e-mail to The Tampa Tribune saying Eric Johnson's latest statements "do not match the facts," and are inconsistent with what the budget director has said in the past.

Eric Johnson said he revealed the auditor's findings in response to statements by Buddy Johnson and Harris, insisting their office had been "transparent" in all its dealings with the county.

In an e-mail sent Friday to County Administrator Pat Bean, and copied to county commissioners and the media, Harris said the elections office had given Bean's staff "line-item detail" of the budget.

Buddy Johnson reiterated those points in two phone calls to The Tampa Tribune this week.

"We've been working so closely with those guys for so long," he said Tuesday.

However, the line-item detail referenced in Harris' e-mail was given to the county budget office in 2007. This year, in response to an economic downturn and tax reductions passed by voters in January, Bean asked all county departments and constitutional officers such as the elections supervisor to submit updated information that identified possible cuts.

Johnson's office responded with dollar totals for three departments, without the detail county financial officers had sought, Bean said.

Reporter Mike Salinero can be reached at (813) 259-8303.

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