Vero Beach police paychecks bouncing and new city retirees going months without pension checks now seem to be part of a larger tableau of fiscal mismanagement which led to last month’s cut-off to the city of potentially millions in state funds, according to new information coming to light daily.
Finance Director Steven Dionne is gone and City Manager Monte Falls is laying low, but as more details gradually emerge, it’s beginning to appear that city’s recent money management problems extend well beyond a failure to complete and file its still-unfinished mandatory FY 2022-23 audit.
As far back as the fall, the chair of the Vero Beach Police Pension Board, Lt. Matt Harrelson, was complaining of months’ long delays by the city Finance Department in computing and processing pension checks for new police department retirees.
Det. Lee Evans – who longtime island residents may remember as Vero’s white-collar crime expert assigned to investigate swindler Ira Hatch – retired on Sept. 25, and ultimately had to wait four months for a pension check to arrive.
“We can’t let this happen,” Harrelson declared to the pension board. “We can’t have that. That’s bad business. It makes us all look bad.”
Meanwhile the city finances apparently were in such disarray as 2024 ended that Vero reportedly could not get approved for financing to purchase 19 needed police vehicles due to the missing financial statements, and Vero’s Wells Fargo payroll checking account lacked sufficient funds to cover some employee paychecks before Christmas.
On Dec. 20, a bi-weekly check to a police officer was returned for insufficient funds. Public records show the returned check numbered 437841 for $2,462.25 written on the “Payroll Account” and a wire transaction on Dec. 31 from the city’s “General Working Fund” account ending in 5638 to make good on the bounced check.
News of this spread like wildfire among police officers, who were already concerned about the pension delays. Similar reports from other city employees who requested anonymity – saying managers did not want word of bounced paychecks reaching the public – could not be confirmed.
But amid the many indicators of problems in the Finance Department, is it still remotely plausible that City Manager Falls was “flabbergasted” on Feb. 11 when he found out the audit for FY 2022-23 still had not been filed and the state would be holding back funds from city coffers?
Back on Nov. 20, for example, Dionne had been scheduled on the agenda of the quarterly meeting of the police pension board to present a report on months-long delays in computing and processing new retirees’ pension checks.
Harrelson had already fired off multiple emails about the Finance Department’s ineptitude, copying Falls and the pension fund manager on the complaints.
Dionne did not appear, however, for the Nov. 20 meeting. Not satisfied with his sending word the report “was not ready,” Harrelson asked Dionne’s empty chair: “Why is it taking so long. Are we having to dig up under a rock to find this stuff?”
Other pension board members agreed in November that the situation was getting ridiculous, with Board member Jose Prieto suggesting they adjourn the meeting to “find out what the hell is going on.”
By the time Dionne finally came to a pension board meeting three months later, he had already told the city’s Finance Commission that the State of Florida had begun withholding an estimated $400,000 in pension contributions from the city due to non-compliance with filing the audited financials.
“Hopefully once we get those filed with the Auditor General’s Office, they’ll be able to release those funds,” Dionne said.
The Joint Legislative Auditing Committee, which took enforcement action against Vero for failing to comply with state law, referred Vero Beach 32963 to the Florida Department of Management Services to find out if the $400,000 that had been held back is gone permanently.
Questions posed to the DMS last week went unanswered because, as seems endemic at all levels of government, the one person possessing the information was out for several days, with no one cross-trained to do the job.
