SCRANTON — City Fire Chief Patrick DeSarno determined he owes taxpayers $559.19 for gas used for personal travel over the last 5½ years, Mayor Wayne Evans said.
City officials, however, declined late this week to provide The Times-Tribune with the documents the fire chief turned in earlier this month, though a rough idea of what they contain emerged Friday.
Evans gave DeSarno’s review to the city controller’s office Nov. 6 and instructed it to verify the information and then provide the mayor with a final report.
“I wanted to get it in their hands,” Evans said. “Time is of the essence.”
Evans said he does not have a copy of the self-audit. Controller Mary Lynn Carey, who has only been on the job for a few days following the resignation of longtime office head Roseann Novembrino, opted to hold back the documents without the input of the office’s solicitor, John Brazil.
Brazil could not be reached for comment Friday.
After she spoke with him Friday, Carey said Brazil “didn’t feel it should be given out. Our review is not complete yet.”
Carey also said she did not feel comfortable showing the newspaper the documents without first hearing DeSarno’s explanations and verifying them.
“I don’t think it would be fair to Pat,” she said.
DeSarno declined to comment.
The Times-Tribune filed a Right to Know Law request for the documents Friday.
Melissa Melewsky, the media law counsel of the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, said DeSarno’s accounting should be a public record.
“It’s a financial record, which means that the vast majority of the Right to Know Law exemptions would not apply to it,” she said.
Evans instructed DeSarno in September to review his gas card use dating to 2014 and reimburse the city.
The action followed the newspaper’s reporting that uncovered how DeSarno used his fuel card at a turnpike station near Allentown on July 18, the same day he got into a fender bender in his city-owned vehicle on vacation at the Jersey shore. After the newspaper began asking questions about the fender bender, DeSarno told Evans that he paid for his own gas while on vacation.
In a statement in September to Evans, the fire chief said he had an inferred agreement with former Mayor Bill Courtright’s administration that he had freedom to use both the car and fuel card as he saw fit — “as my own, in essence.” He acknowledged that was a “wrong-headed assumption” made without “malice or deceit.”
Evans has since put in place policies prohibiting personal use of taxpayer funded fuel credit cards or vehicles.
Though Evans did not retain a copy of DeSarno’s review, he scribbled the sum total on a piece of paper: $559.19.
DeSarno has not paid the city yet. Evans said he wants the controller’s office to first verify the amount the fire chief owes.
DeSarno reviewed fuel records compiled for him by the city to determine which out-of-town trips he bought gas on were personal and which were city business. Evans said that the fire chief included some documentation to prove certain trips were for business.
“Flyers and invitations for different things related to the fire department,” Evans said. “It was really just a listing of dates and the amounts.”
The newspaper Friday also reviewed fuel billing records dating back to the beginning of 2014. DeSarno used his gas card 49 times, at a cost of $1,275, outside of Lackawanna County, according to its review.
The controller’s task now is to look over and verify the fire chief’s accounting.
The documents will be folded into an upcoming larger audit of city employee gas card use.
JIM LOCKWOOD, staff writer, contributed to this report.
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