Although some officials made light Wednesday of the findings of a state audit that examined the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), we believe taxpayers deserve better than the organization’s lax record-keeping, gift card policies and expense procedures.
Let us say that we don’t believe the tourist bureau set out to cheat taxpayers or intentionally waste money.
However, we do believe the CVB has allowed a culture in which money was spent freely, where there was little check on spending, and where the fact it is a quasi-government agency has never seemed to matter.
The Tennessee Comptroller’s Office audit, for instance, found that 36 percent of the CVB’s credit card charges had no detailed receipts, that no log was kept of gift cards it received – and expenses it later incurred – in exchange for website advertising, and that no written reports could be found of the “regular and periodic written reports” the organization is supposed to make to the mayor and county commissioners.
Private businesses would never allow such lenient record-keeping. Indeed, the Internal Revenue Service would come down hard on such permissiveness.