Cincinnati Park Board using endowments for cars, food

Please scroll down to the end of the story to review the documents obtained by The Enquirer.

The private endowments once used by the Cincinnati Park Board to pay its top executive more than $100,000 in bonuses are currently being used to pay for a car allowance that now totals $12,000 a year, according to documents obtained by The Enquirer.

The park board has paid the car allowance to executive director Willie Carden since 2000 as part of his employment contract, and even raised it several years ago. The board also voted last year to use the same source to provide a $4,800 annual car allowance to Marijane Klug, the department’s second-highest ranking official, the records indicate.

And the documents, received through an open records request, show that Carden received $48,500 to cover expenses incurred on his agency credit card over the last three years. The endowments also paid for Carden’s membership to a private, membership-by-invitation club and thousands in meals there dating back to 2013.

In addition, the park board voted to take $21,000 out of the endowments to pay the legal expenses of the separate nonprofit Cincinnati Parks Foundation after it was involved in a previous ethics investigation into Carden and Klug in 2012.

The disclosures led Mayor John Cranley, who is asking voters to approve a permanent property tax increase to raise $8 million for the parks system, to ask the park board Friday to approve a temporary moratorium on any discretionary spending, especially from the endowment funds.

Earlier this week, Cranley called for a third-party audit of the park board, separate from annual city and state reviews. He reiterated his desire to get it done quickly in an email sent late Thursday to City Manager Harry Black, and said Friday that he wants to look specifically at the park board's use of the endowments.

“I am disturbed by some of these findings,” Cranley told The Enquirer Friday.

“We should put the same checks and balances and procedures in place for the private endowment money that we have for any city tax dollars.”

City Manager Harry Black stated in a memo late Friday that the process for that separate audit had begun. The parks department will pay for the audit, but the city manager's office will oversee it and pick the accounting firm to conduct the financial review.

But Cranley added that the disclosures don’t alter his support of the new tax.

“The money we’re talking about raising (from the parks tax) would come through city channels and have even more checks and balances than there is even now,” he said. “We still need this levy.”

Park Board defends use of endowments

The nine endowment funds were donated to the park board through the years by private individual; five of the funds are restricted for use on specific parks or specific programs. Still, Cranley said the endowment funds should be considered the same as city tax money, since they are controlled by the publicly appointed park board.

Park board officials defended the expenses Friday, yet board chairman Otto Budig told The Enquirer that “there is always a level of complacency in any business when you do something for a long time and are doing very, very well. And it has gone very well here for this parks system.”

He said that the park board welcomes the audit. “We can’t have this drag on for two, three or four months,” Budig said. “But we will do whatever we must or should do to accommodate the audit.

“And hopefully we still can earn a modicum of trust from the public so we can move through the areas where we might have been a bit complacent to make the changes we need in a transparent way.”

The board also tapped the endowment funds to pay at $200,000 contribution to a political nonprofit created in June to help support the campaign for the tax increase. But after The Enquirer revealed that donation and where it came from, the park board asked for and received the money back.

In addition, The Enquirer disclosed this week that the board used the endowments to pay Carden bonuses worth $52,000 annually for two years, after sending it through the separate Cincinnati Parks Foundation nonprofit for payment.

That occurred even as the Ohio Ethics Commission was investigating possible improper compensation elsewhere for Carden and Klug. The pair settled that probe in May 2013, agreeing to pay back other bonuses received between 2004 and 2010 separately and improperly from the nonprofit parks foundation.

“They appear to use these endowment funds to spend in whatever way they want to, without regard to what is appropriate or right,” said Tim Mara, the leader of the largest group opposing the proposed tax increase. “I am baffled they would give such an allowance to Ms. Klug.

“It looks like Mr. Carden and his assistant have been living the high life at the public’s expense. Extravagant spending at the parks department is a breach of trust.”

Carden said his 2000 employment contract gave him a car allowance and that he needs it to visit all the parks in the city. Carden said he purchased his own Audi SUV, and uses the monthly $1,000 stipend to cover gas and maintenance expenses.

“I just had it in for its routine 50,000-mile visit that turned into a $1,500 brake job, so it does help,” Carden said.

Said Budig: “We definitely don’t want Willie to be a desk jockey and this speaks to that.”

But Cranley said he strongly disagrees with the practice.

“You should earn what you earn in a salary and that’s it,” Cranley said. “I opposed this when I was on City Council and I oppose it now. We don’t even have one (a car) for myself or our city manager.”

Eight Cincinnati city employees, all department directors, are given a car allowance, the highest of which is about $6,000 per year.

Endowment funds also used for credit card, club

Park officials also say that all the expenses on the credit card were for agency reasons and could be accounted for. The Enquirer has requested but has not reviewed the actual credit card bills.

“There are times that we want to go above and beyond and buy things outside the normal budget or what the city gives to us for certain events, and that’s what I use it for,” Carden said.

Budig also defended the use of endowment money to pay for the nonprofit foundation’s legal fees. He said that since it was park board employees who created the ethics investigation, that it should be the park board should cover the legal fees for the foundation.

The Park Board also used the endowments to pay for seats at events presented by the Parks Foundation nonprofit, and even paid for a membership and at least $6,000 for meals and expenses at the Metropolitan Club in Covington between 2013 and this year.

Documents also indicated that the parks department used the endowments frequently to cover daily expenses such as office expenses, email services and web services. Carden and Budig said that was because there wasn’t enough in the city budget to cover those mundane costs.

“There’s a point where we need a level of service over and beyond what we can provide with city funds,” Carden said. “And sometimes we need to do things more quickly than can be done through the traditional city process.”

The records also indicate that Cincinnati Parks also used the services of Klug Transportation, later named Queen City Transportation, at least four times and used the endowments to pay for it.

But Carden said while Klug’s husband is related to the family that owns that company, they have no ownership or participation in the bus service and therefore that is not a conflict of interest.

Cranley said that the connection “needs to be investigated.”