Over a five-year period through December 2014, Robert Rust, former executive director of the Municipal Employees’ Retirement System, used MERS funds to pay for more than $317,000 in conference training that included expensive dinners, cocktail parties, and extended stays in hotel rooms for MERS employees, board members and their guests.
The findings are included in one of two new audits released this morning by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera’s office. A second audit says an $18 million-a-year Medicaid program that pays for nonemergency rides to the doctor is receiving almost no monitoring by the Department of Health and Hospitals to ensure that those rides are medically necessary or even occurred at all.
Rust resigned in June while he was under fire for allegedly misspending retirees’ money on meals and out-of-state trips. The audit released this morning focused on the controversial “Educational Conference Account” that Rust created in April 2007 with approval from the MERS Board of Trustees. Between January 2010 and December 2014, Rust solicited and received nearly $212,500 for the account, mostly from investment firms that contract with MERS, the audit says.
State law requires annual educational training on investments and investment strategies for MERS board members and employees. However, the audit says Rust used funds from the Educational Conference Account and other MERS funds “to pay for a variety of expenses that did not appear to benefit MERS or its members,” the auditor’s office says in a news release. Among those expenditures: Seven out-of-state “planning” or “scouting” trips Rust and his family took at a $14,590 cost to MERS.
In a written response included in the full audit, attorneys for Rust note the MERS board signed off on all travel expenses and if they felt they were not appropriate they should have not approved them.
See the full audit and response from Rust’s attorneys.
In a separate audit on the Medicaid program, Purpera’s office found that from 2011 through 2014 DHH paid out $1.6 million for 55,474 transport claims that had no corresponding medical claim on the same day the ride happened.
“Not having a medical claim on the same day could indicate that transportation providers are billing for trips that did not occur, that recipients did not actually attend their appointment, or that medical providers did not correctly bill for their services,” reads a news release from Purpera’s office.
In its written response included in the full audit, DHH says it agrees with the findings.
“Many of the issues identified by the auditors are known and recognized by DHH and were the basis for the decision to transition remaining nonemergency medical transportation operations to the Bayou Health Managed Care Organizations,” effective Dec. 1, reads the response. “The Medicaid agency will no longer operate a fee-for-service delivery model for NEMT.”
