Portland didn’t supervise the former director of its municipal golf courses when he was allowed to continue working after he retired, and it paid him nearly $26,000 for hours he wasn’t authorized to work, an investigation found.

The City Auditor’s Office announced Wednesday that evidence showed John Zoller set his own hours, never had his timesheets approved by a manager despite it being required, worked from home when he wasn’t supposed to and sent more than 100 emails from his city-issued account responding to vendors on Craigslist. All of those emails were unrelated to city business.

A call to the Auditor’s Office’s fraud hotline last September prompted the investigation. The lead auditor was Gordon Friedman, who formerly worked as a reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive.

[Read the investigation report]

Portland Parks and Recreation spokesperson Mark Ross, whose bureau oversees the city’s five golf courses, said the department plans to implement some of the Auditor’s Office’s recommendations. Managers will be retrained on their responsibilities and the agency will review its policies regarding working from home. He said the bureau has followed the city’s administrative rules on employing retirees.

The Auditor’s Office said the bureau didn’t agree with recommendations that Parks Bureau Director Adena Long needed to be the only person who could approve retirees to keep working and formally document their employment in personnel files and on organizational charts.

Ross said city rules allow Long or someone she designates to hire retirees and that will continue. He said the bureau also doesn’t plan to list all its non-permanent hires such as retirees and seasonal workers on an organizational chart “due to the large and fluctuating numbers.” He said the Parks Bureau workforce reaches more than 3,000 positions at its peak.

“Portland Parks & Recreation and its golf program are grounded in deep and longstanding community relationships, and we appreciate this anomaly being brought to the city’s attention,” Ross said.

Zoller worked for the city for more than 30 years before he retired in July 2018 as Portland’s golf director, city records show. The auditor’s office said he was allowed to continue working within Portland Parks and Recreation for one day a week until that December. But his position was extended until July 2019 “without justification.”

He was paid around $93,000 in 2018, which included his base pay of almost $68,000 for the first seven months of the year, city records show.

Zoller’s agreement with the city bureau was that he would keep working one day a week to ease the transition of current director Vincent Johnson, the auditor’s office said. Johnson had been the assistant director of golf since 2016 and began his duties as director in September 2018, city records show.

The lack of oversight led to the city paying Zoller double what he was owed, according to the Auditor’s Office.

A city audit in 2019 found Portland’s publicly-run golf courses needed a $800,000 bailout from the city’s general fund to stay solvent in 2017. It also found that many of the factors that led to the funding shortfall remained in place. The five courses cost $9.6 million to run in 2018 and were supposed to generate at least that much in revenue from players, the audit said.

-- Everton Bailey Jr; ebailey@oregonian.com | 503-221-8343 | @EvertonBailey

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