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How did a $70 meal bill cost Luzerne County half-a-million?
It is likely to go down in Luzerne County history as a textbook case of staggeringly inept petty politics.
Somewhere, a grad student should write his or her thesis on it.
Serious TV political thriller shows can use it as a plot line, satirists can plum it for the absurd humor it would be to all those not footing the real bills.
With enough side stories included, it would make a good movie, most likely in the dark humor vein of, say, Paddy Chayefsky’s brilliant — and sometimes disturbingly prescient — script for the movie Network.
“It” is the Wren Affair, the Receipt Deceit, the Flag Follies.
Long ago, in a county run by commissioners rather than a council, county veteran affairs director Richard Wren submitted a receipt for reimbursement of a $70 expense, money spent on meals for the Disabled Veterans of America after the organization placed flags at area cemeteries. Chump change cost for a worthy cause.
Problem was, Wren doctored the receipt. His claim: it was a legitimate expense, he just needed a receipt with the right date and charge.
He got fired. He sued. He won. As staff writer Jennifer Learn-Andes reported Wednesday, the bill for this battle topped $500,000.
Last month, county council approved a $378,428 payment to Wren, covering a $200,000 jury award and his legal costs. This week, county Chief Solicitor Romilda Crocamo let the public know that the county’s own legal costs hit $145,504.
That’s $523,932, spent on a battle sparked by a $70 lunch bill.
That’s $74,847 a year, from Wren’s termination in 2009 to now. Or, to put it another way, for every year since the $70 receipt was submitted for reimbursement, the county has spent 1,000 times more than the receipt cost.
If you invested $70 in the stock market and got $74,000 back in one year, you would be an investment mega-genius.
If you got that kind of return seven years in a row, you would be an investment god.
The absurdity runs deep. The county’s out-of-pocket expense should have maxed out at $150,000, thanks to insurance purchased for just such cases. But the insurance company warned the county it would not pay if a settlement offer was rejected.
There were, in fact, two settlement offers, Crocamo said, either one much cheaper than the final cost. Wren’s attorneys offered to settle for $185,000 in March of 2014, and again for a mere $85,000 five months later.
To be clear, Wren admitted to doctoring the receipt. That shows both a procedural failure to get one when he actually bought lunches and a moral failure when he decided to submit a faked proof of purchase. But this spiralled so far out of control and into inanity that his blame shrinks in the distance.
How did a $70 meal bill cost Luzerne County half-a-million?
Round up the usual suspects: Stupidity, parsimony, petty politics, and arrogance of elected officials in handling taxpayer money.