Raleigh television station WRAL had a good watchdog story on the state motor fleet yesterday:
The state motor fleet is receipt-driven and gets no money from the state's general fund. Agencies pay a monthly fee for the cars based how much they drive, but the mileage scale only slides one way. There is no provision to save money by driving less.
The Department of Correction is one of the motor fleet's biggest customers. It gets more than 2,400 vehicles a year, and most are permanently assigned to correction employees who use the cars for everything from training to transferring prisoners.
From July 2008 through June 2009, the DOC paid approximately $1.7 million for vehicles that were not driven.
One car, a Ford Taurus in Greenville, wasn't driven for five months during the last fiscal year, yet the DOC paid more than $2,000 for it during that time, records showed. DOC leaders said a cut-back in staff training and an employee's injury kept the car in the lot.
Click here for the full text. The video is below:
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