SOUTH EL MONTE >> A blistering audit by State Controller Betty Yee’s office found several leaders in South El Monte charged $290,000 on city credit cards over four years, paying for bar tabs for consultants, airfare, staff lunches and almost $40,000 on Apple electronic devices.

All of the charges were made between July 2012 and September 2016. Among the leaders in the city who made purchases questioned in the audit were former City Manager Anthony Ybarra, former Councilman Wihans Ili and current Councilmembers Hector Delgado and Angelica Garcia, who are married.

Neither Delgado nor Garcia returned requests for comment. A cellphone number for Ybarra was disconnected.

The audit also listed several hotel stays that the authors deemed excessive, including a trip to Las Vegas that didn’t appear to be business related.

“South El Monte officials demonstrated a culture of incompetence and blatant disregard for accountability of taxpayer dollars,” Yee said in a statement. “I am especially concerned with their exorbitant lobbying and consulting expenses that resulted in undefined benefits to the city and its residents.”

Additional charges listed in the audit showed many expensive purchases by Ybarra and council members on city-issued credit cards:

• After the city spent $37,906 on Apple electronics products, several council members made individual purchases: Ili spent $2,592 for a MacBook Pro, Apple TV and accessories on Oct. 15, 2014, and a day later, Delgado and Garcia spent $3,611 and $3,417, respectively, on MacBook Pros, iPhones, Apple TV and accessories.

• In January 2013, Ybarra charged $642, including a $206 no-show fee, for a stay at the Parc 55 Wyndham hotel in San Francisco. In October 2013, he also spent $840 on a weekend stay at the Westin hotel in Seattle.

• Delgado charged a $378 hotel stay at the Aria Hotel in Las Vegas in June 2015.

• Delgado made another Apple purchase on March 20, 2015, spending $978 for an iPad Mini and accessories.

Yee’s report Thursday was only the latest example of lax financial controls within the small city of 21,000 nestled in the San Gabriel Valley. Despite its size, the city has nevertheless attracted scrutiny from both state regulators looking for questionable practices and federal law enforcement rooting out corruption.

In April, former South El Monte Mayor Luis Aguinaga was sentenced to one year in jail and one year of house arrest for his part in a seven-year corruption scheme.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Aguinaga and another city leader — who was never named — received tens of thousands of dollars apiece from a city contractor, paid in envelopes stuffed in cash left in cars and in City Hall bathrooms, among other locations.

This is the second audit in less than a year to open South El Monte to charges of mishandling taxpayer dollars. The first, completed in June 2016 by a firm hired by the city, found Ybarra’s handling of contracts with a pair of consulting firms — Arroyo Strategy Group and ECM Group Inc. — left the city open to fraud.

The June 2016 audit found Ybarra executed three contracts with Arroyo worth $110,000 and one with ECM for $29,376, none of which went before the full council to be approved.

The auditors also found ECM billed the city for more work hours than there are in a day — two days the firm billed 25 hours, and on two others billed 26 and 27 hours.

But the state audit went even deeper, finding problematic dealings with three additional consultants — Mike Roos and Company, Madrid Consulting Group and Pacific Atlantic Partners — as well as the city’s garbage hauler, Athens Services.

Yee’s office also found that Arroyo billed $1.04 million to the city from July 2013 to June 2016 without submitting time cards to detail its work. And ECM Group was overpaid more than $69,000 at one point.

Overall, the most recent audit found that 88 percent of the city’s financial and administrative oversight policies were inadequate.

The other two current City Council members not specifically called out in the audit — Mayor Gloria Olmos and Councilman Joe Gonzales — were split Thursday on whether the city had installed proper controls on its finances following the June 2016 audit and Aguinaga’s guilty plea.

Both Olmos and interim City Manager Jennifer Vasquez said they believe the city had made good progress on changing its ways.

“I believe a majority of issues has been ferreted out,” Olmos said. “We’ve put policies and procedures in place so staff can’t do what they did before.”

Vasquez said South El Monte has instituted a more strict approval process for purchases and limits on travel spending. And maximum spending allowances were created to prevent credit cards from being abused.

Vasquez also said the city has reevaulated the practice of allowing City Council members to have city credit cards at all.

But Gonzales, who along with Olmos pushed for the first audit to be made public as soon as possible, said he wasn’t sure much had changed.

“You’ve got a City Council that pretty much does what they want when they want, and you’ve got a city manager who goes along with it,” said Gonzales, who often finds himself on the losing end of 3-1 council votes.

“At the end of the day, the city manager’s supposed to be controlling these contract employees,” Gonzales said. “I had no idea they were going over the contract amount. That’s our city staff’s job to oversee.”