Galveston Beach Patrol and Park Board both failed the public
By Michael A. Smith
Galveston County Daily News
Oct 8, 2024
As details emerge about the theft of more than $50,000 from accounts in custody of Galveston’s Beach Patrol and Park Board of Trustees, the less flattering becomes the picture of financial oversight and transparency exercised by those public entities.
The beach patrol exercised near zero oversight of accounts holding money raised from the public to assist the Galveston Lifeguarding Association, a nonprofit that funds scholarships, pays for lifeguard equipment and offers financial assistance to families of drowning victims.
Inattention and inaction among beach patrol administrators allowed what should, at worst, have been a one-time loss of about $6,000 to balloon into a near-total bleeding of the nonprofit’s accounts.
Among the most amazing allegations disclosed Monday about the scandal was that former beach patrol employee Angela Barton in December reported an association debit card in her possession had been compromised, but nothing was done to shut the card down.
Barton, 52, who was on the nonprofit’s board, told Galveston Beach Patrol Chief Peter Davis a relative had stolen the card, spent more than $6,000 and then committed suicide, according to a police affidavit.
Police arrested Barton, who was on the nonprofit’s board, in Oklahoma on Sept. 3 and extradited her back to the island Sept. 15, where she has remained in the Galveston County jail on a third-degree felony charge of theft and a second charge of credit or debit card abuse with bonds totaling $265,000.
It’s not amazing that a board member of a small nonprofit is charged with embezzling its money; that’s common.
It’s probably harder to find a youth sports club that hasn’t been ripped off than one that has, for example.
What’s amazing is that apparently no one in beach patrol thought to cancel that card, remove Barton’s access or even verify whether one of her relatives had committed suicide.
Instead, patrol leaders left the card active, apparently accepted Barton’s weird story as fact and left her with access to the association’s accounts.
Over the next few months, she turned a $6,000 embezzlement into one of $50,000 or so, according to police records.
Not until May 14 did Beach Patrol Capt. Tony Pryor contact the Galveston Police Department after realizing the card Barton reported stolen in December still had been in use during the following six months, according to the affidavit.
Accounts that in May 2023 contained $59,000.05 had by April 2024 been drained to $56.08, according to the affidavit.
Davis on May 15 told park board members he had become concerned about missing money after the nonprofit’s board voted to transfer funds into a project to erect a monument honoring Black lifeguards, CEO Kimberly Danesi said in late May.
Amazing.
We don’t fault beach patrol leaders for lax financial oversight of the nonprofit, although you could argue its books should have been on their radar.
We do fault them for not disclosing, and in fact withholding, information about key events in the investigation.
Park board leaders in late May went public with everything but a brass band about their embezzlement problem.
They disclosed some facts and talked a lot about their devotion to transparency.
We’ve become skeptical about that devotion because of these things:
Park board leaders not only didn’t disclose that Barton had been arrested and charged in early September, they gave misleading answers to questions about the status of the police investigation.
Park board leaders didn’t disclose, and we argue were misleading, about the fact City Auditor Glenn Bulgherini had completed a forensic audit into the fate of the nonprofit’s money.
We think that’s in part because of the agenda item the board used to inform the public of its deliberation about that matter of compelling interest:
“Discussion of the City Auditor’s Status Report Concerning the Current Park Board Audit.”
That masterpiece of understatement is designed to be opaque, ignored, missed.
Who knows what motivated those decisions, but it wasn’t devotion to transparency.
1 comment:
Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.
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