Thrusday, January 14, 1999
Audit into Butler Co. engineer's office expands
BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON — A complaint accusing the Butler County engineer's office of improprieties has caused the state to expand the scope of its 1998 audit.
Tom Prendergast, spokesman for State Auditor Jim Petro, said the expanded audit of the engineer's office would “address certain issues that have been brought to our attention.” It should be completed by summer.
Mr. Prendergast said state laws prevented him from divulging more information about the nature and the source of the complaint.
Butler County Engineer Dean Foster said he thinks the complaint was an anonymous one that concerned allegations of favoritism for two employees and unspecified questions about certain road projects performed by his employees.
The state auditor's office approached him in October about those issues, he said.
The favoritism issue concerned the amount of sick leave granted to two employees, he said.
State investigators never explained the allegation about certain road projects, he said.
“I don't know what the allegation was because they wouldn't tell me,” Mr. Foster said. “They wanted to look at how we did the work and at details about the work.”
He said his office did nothing wrong and has cooperated fully with the state's query.
“We responded to everything,” Mr. Foster said. “We have nothing to hide. When you look at all these rumors and gossip, it doesn't do anybody any good. I'm a little disappointed in the way (the state's) handling the matter.”
He speculated that the anonymous complaint may be rooted in his office's union controversy last year, although he admitted he has no proof.
Last fall, his 28 road crew employees voted to be represented by the Teamsters Local 100. In the weeks before the vote, Mr. Foster was accused of using strong-arm tactics to try to keep the union out.
During the union organizing effort, workers complained about inadequate pay raises and a lack of job security.
In an Aug. 4 memo to unclassified staff, managers and supervisors, he referred to the Teamsters as “the most corrupt union in the history of American labor” and called them “gangsters, hoodlums,
hooligans, bums, street trash and the very worst of a labor force.”
The complaint “might be related to that,” Mr. Foster said. “There may be some people out there trying to stir something up. But I don't know that for a fact.”
Mr. Foster was appointed county engineer in March 1994 after his father retired after about 20 years in the position. Mr. Foster has held the job since then by winning two elections. His current term expires in 2000.
Junior Mann, organizer for Teamsters Local 100 in Evendale, emphatically denied that anyone connected with the union complained to the state auditor's office.
“Nothing was instigated by Local 100,” he said. “We don't have the time or money to try to dig up how they spend their money.”
The union is trying to negotiate a contract with the engineer's office.
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