May 4, 2001 – The Port Authority is tightening control over its airport parking lot collections in the wake of an audit finding of sloppy record-keeping.
Auditors found that on average, the Cyril E. King Airport lot dispenses 1,250 tickets a day for parking, but shows cash collections on just 315. The difference may be attributed to taxis and the persons who pay monthly parking fees, but there was no way to verify that, leaving the door wide open to possible abuse.
The U.S. Interior Department's Inspector General's Office released an audit Friday of the authority's billing and collections functions, touching specifically on leases and the parking lots. It was the first audit the office made on the Port Authority in five years. Auditors looked especially at transactions in fiscal years 1998, 1999 and 2000.
The authority took exception to some of the audit findings, but agreed with all of the recommendations for improving internal controls.
Concerning leases the auditors found that:
– VIPA failed to collect $10,600 in percentages on rentals from subleases.
– It is not making site visits to its leased properties.
– It had 87 delinquent accounts totaling $1.17 million and could document no collection efforts for 20 of the accounts.
– It wrote off as uncollectible 31 delinquent accounts totaling $909,562, with little justification for doing so.
– It has failed to enforce the regulation that tenants maintain general liability insurance, thus leaving the authority open to being sued as the deep pockets behind the tenants.
The authority has not had a collection officer since 1992 when the former officer retired. His duties were transferred to the director of property management and the three property management officers.
Of the $1.17 million in delinquent accounts, 27 large accounts made up more than $1 million of the outstanding debt. Auditors reviewed those and found that for 20 of the cases, no collections efforts could be documented. Gordon Finch, executive director of the Port Authority, disputed the finding, saying the large accounts are primarily with airlines and cruise lines and the turnaround time for payment is usually more than 60 or 90 days, but the tenants are good tenants.
However, in his response to the audit, he listed corrective action taken in several areas.
Finch said the authority has reviewed its agreements with tenants who are allowed to sublease (few are) and adjusted the billing retroactively to recover the percentage payments.
He said the authority also sent letters to tenants who do not have liability insurance.
Site visits to leased properties are supposed to take place every three months, according the Port Authority manual. Of 20 tenant files that the auditors reviewed, they found only one that had had any site visits in three years, and that was in October 1997.
Finch said the number of leases has tripled since the manual was written. It will be updated to require site visits every six months.
Looking at the airport parking lots, the auditors found virtually no controls on St. Croix and inadequate ones on St. Thomas.
"The airport access system, which machine-stamped onto a ticket the date and time that a vehicle entered and exited the airport parking lot, did not work at the exit locations. As a result, the date and time that a vehicle exited the airport parking lot could not be determined from the used tickets."
Cashiers on St. Thomas manually wrote on each ticket the amount collected; on St. Croix there was not even this record.
Taxicabs, individuals who leased space on a monthly basis, and those who spent less than 15 minutes at the airport do not have to pay at all, but there is no way to identify those tickets from others. The IG recommended putting in magnetic card keys for those authorized to use the facilities free.
Finch concurred with the need for an access system at exit booths. Shirley Smith, authority spokeswoman, said Friday that the system was installed at both airports in March.
However, Finch said magnetic cards cannot be read by the current, automated system that was installed last September to replace the push-button systems that were more susceptible to malfunctions. He also believes that card keys increase the potential for misuse.
