At the end of their 52-page report detailing purchasing department problems, grand jurors call for the removal of Purchasing Director Geri Sams and recommend placing her department under the control of the finance director.
In Tuesday's presentment, grand jurors wrote that the purchasing department has "become a block to efficient government ... (and) allowed wasteful spending."
Grand jurors laid poor customer service and a lack of uniformity squarely at the feet of Ms. Sams, saying she favored certain city departments and failed to provide adequate leadership in her own office.
Ms. Sams did not return a phone message left at her office Tuesday afternoon, where a purchasing employee said she was attending a meeting.
The report, which grand jurors said was based on hours of testimony and thousands of documents, outlines a series of purchase order problems discovered during their investigation of the department, including:
The "indiscriminate changing of purchase order dates" from the 2002 budget year to 2001, a practice that grand jurors said will result in a countywide budget shortfall by October.
"An arbitrary decision by Ms. Sams has now greatly impacted the other county departments and their budgetary effectiveness," the presentment says.
GRAND JURORS CONTEND that Ms. Sams' alleged incompetence was fostered by several Augusta commissioners who reportedly allowed her to "subvert the chain of command" and overrule any administrative attempts at discipline.
"Under the present administrative scheme, the purchasing director still does what she wants," grand jurors wrote, adding that a deputy administrator "admitted in testimony that she goes over his head."
Deputy Administrator Walter Hornsby said Tuesday that he rejects the grand jury's notion that Ms. Sams has free rein.
"I'm not so sure that's accurate," Mr. Hornsby said. "She sends me everything she's doing. She keeps me posted. She's a pretty good team player."
The most detailed description grand jurors gave of purchasing's problems and Ms. Sams' alleged incompetence concerned botched food orders that left the Richmond County jail and Richmond County Correctional Institution in short supply.
Ms. Sams had assigned longtime Purchasing Agent Mary Bedenbaugh the responsibility of the weekly jail food orders, grand jurors said, after another employee resigned.
In January, Mrs. Bedenbaugh was recuperating from an extended illness but had prepared all the jail food bids for the week and had the orders ready to be faxed to the appropriate vendors. When she woke up sick the morning they were to be faxed, she called Ms. Sams and told her the orders were ready and that they only needed to be faxed to numbers already programmed into the fax machine's address book.
Ms. Sams told her she would take care of it, the report said, but on Saturday morning, one of the vendors called Mrs. Bedenbaugh at home because he had not received an order that week. Ms. Sams said she had not faxed the orders because she was busy at an Augusta Commission meeting, which didn't start until 2 p.m., the report said.
Mrs. Bedenbaugh ended up going to the office later Saturday to fax the orders and waited for vendors' replies, grand jurors said.
"This is not an isolated incident with the food orders," the report states.
LATER, WHEN MS. SAMS began receiving questions about ordering delays, she called a meeting with Mrs. Bedenbaugh and two other employees that "turned into a shouting match" and ultimately ended in Mrs. Bedenbaugh being suspended for three days - a disciplinary action that was later overturned.
During that three-day suspension, grand jurors said, nobody in the department, including Ms. Sams, knew how to get the orders out, and it became necessary to call a former employee for instructions.
As a result, instead of 20 cases of hot dogs requested (1,920 hot dogs) only 20 pounds of hot dogs were ordered (200 hot dogs). Instead of 10 cases of Hot Pockets (480) only four cases were ordered (96). Instead of five cases of chicken patties yielding 800 patties, the five cases that were ordered yielded only 270 patties.
Mrs. Bedenbaugh, a 25-year employee of the department, has since left to work with the Sheriff's Department.
In a phone interview from her home Tuesday night, she said there is much more about the purchasing department that needs to come to light.
"I had to go," Mrs. Bedenbaugh said. "It was either go over there or leave altogether because (City Administrator George Kolb) and them backed her."
In response to the incident, the grand jury recommended that the Sheriff's Department create its own purchasing department, saying it would be more efficient.
Mrs. Bedenbaugh said she agrees with that recommendation because Ms. Sams has already assigned all the work to the departments.
"Why does she need the people she's got?" she asked. "They didn't do anything anyway. Some of them sit in there and talk on the phone all day and balance their checkbooks and look at catalogs."
"They didn't do anything anyway. Some of them sit in there and talk on the phone all day and balance their checkbooks and look at catalogs." - Mary Bedenbaugh, former Purchasing Agent on the department
Reach Heidi Coryell Williams and Sylvia Cooper at (706) 724-0851.
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