County, LR, NLR limit use of vehicles

— Most workers driving city- and county-owned vehicles have limited opportunity to use the vehicles for personal tasks but when they do, they are expected to pay taxes on the benefit, Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County officials said Monday.

Of Little Rock’s 2,000 vehicle fleet, about 400, including cars and pickups, are available for employees to drive on city business, said Assistant City Manager Bryan Day. The city’s fleet includes heavy equipment such as bulldozers and dump trucks, as well as light equipment such as riding lawnmowers.

However, city policy is that the vehicles are checked in or out. Most often the vehicles are parked at their “duty station” he said, noting for example that the director of a recreation center might have a city car that he drives from the center upon parking his personal vehicle.

Day said that some city employees, plus the mayor, get vehicle allowances ranging from about $200 a month to about $600 a month that they pay taxes on.

North Little Rock provides city-owned vehicles for its department heads and administrators to take home, but none are provided to elected officials.Those who use the publicly owned vehicles are taxed according to Internal Revenue Service regulations, city Finance Director Bob Sisson said.

“Mostly it’s department heads or someone who has access to a vehicle or a reason to drive one home,” Sisson said.

In Pulaski County, no elected official has a county vehicle, said Comptroller Mike Hutchens. However, the county judge, circuit clerk, treasurer, and comptroller get a monthly car allowance of $650 “and we pay taxes on that,” he said.

Hutchens didn’t have an exact number for how many vehicles are in the county fleet, but noted that many employees check out vehicles daily.

“We have pickup trucks and trailers that haul stuff and run around to all the buildings daily,” he said. “We have electricians, plumbers, carpenters - we have guys that do everything, but those vehicles stay here. They don’t drive them home.”

Those who do drive vehicles home work in the Road and Bridge Department, in the Public Works Department or for Pulaski County Emergency Management.

The use of taxpayer-provided vehicles by public employees, including elected officials, was spotlighted in recent Arkansas Democrat-Gazette articles which disclosed that some state officials were using vehicles for personal use but not paying income tax on the benefit despite Internal Revenue Service and state tax rules. Some officials pledged then to pay the tax or reimburse the state and/or surrender the vehicle.

Subsequent articles have reported that the state has more than 8,500 vehicles and perhaps more than 400 employees pay tax for using them for reasons other than official business. The official state policy is that vehicles should be used only for official business, but some commuting between home and work is allowed and is not considered by the state to be personal use.

In Little Rock, department directors make up the bulk of city employees who get monthly car allowances, said Day.

“The rate is based on how much you think you will drive,” Day said. “The planning, public works and parks directors drive a lot, whereas the directors of human resources and information technology don’t drive as much. I probably use between $50-$60 a week in gas, for example.”

A report released Monday by the city manager’s office shows that 23 employees get monthly vehicle allowances.

The allowances, before taxes and per two-week pay period, include:

$26.76 for Paul Gerard, purchasing agent.

$115.38 for Paula Patterson, administrative services manager.

$138.46 for Mike Blakely, director of the Little Rock Zoo; Steven Beck, director of public works; Sara Lenehan, director of finance; and Wendell Jones, director of fleet services.

$184.62 for Truman Tolefree, parks and recreation director; Toni Bozynski, planning and development director; and Tom Carpenter, city attorney.

$230.76 for Mayor Mark Stodola.

$276.92 for City Manager Bruce Moore.

Carpenter said most of Little Rock’s vehicles are kept at the city depot near City Hall.

“Those stay here. That’s the way our thing works,” he said. “We have a car pool, and if I send a runner some place and it’s more than just across the street, they’re supposed to take out a city car and go where they need to go and then check it back in.”

Day said that city vehicles are for city business only, but “if you had to swing through the gas station or stop at McDonald’s for a bite to eat on the way to or from where you’re going, we wouldn’t frown on it.”

Little Rock police spokesman Lt. Terry Hastings said the department has about 300 of the city’s 2,000 vehicles, including cars, trucks, sport utility vehicles, motorcycles and helicopters.

“The only people that have take-home vehicles are people who are subject to recall,” he said, pointing to the chiefs, assistant chiefs, homicide detectives, captains, himself and the sergeant who serves as the secondary public information officer.

“They are not for personal use,” he said. “I have one that I drive home. When I get home at night it’s parked in the driveway and stays there until the next day or if I’m called out. If I’m already out, I don’t drive home and get it. You just go to the scene and you’re not reimbursed for that.”

Hastings noted that Police Department personnel get 30 minutes for their lunch break, which does not count as personal use.

“We are on duty 24 hours a day,” he said. “So if I’m at a restaurant and somebody walks in with a gun, everybody else gets to run out. I have to stay and deal with it. That’s part of the job, and that’s true whether I’m on duty or off duty.”

The Little Rock Fire Department has 400 vehicles including a mix of cars, pickups and sport utility vehicles. The fire chief, two assistant chiefs, two division chiefs, eight fire marshals, four training officers and one administrative personnel are authorized to drive a vehicle home - 18 vehicles in all.

“Any of these people are subject to be called in,” said Capt. Edwin Woolf, a spokesman for the department. “The rest of us pretty much live at the fire stations.”

In North Little Rock, there were 26 non-uniformed employees authorized to use city vehicles on a take-home basis in 2009, according to a list Sisson provided, but two of those didn’t report any days used. Personal use of the vehicles isn’t allowed, he said.

The list doesn’t include police officers because the IRS exempts police from being taxed for take-home vehicles, he added.

The IRS sets a $3 per day value for public vehicles used between home and work, Sisson said. Employees are charged that much as income, which is added as salary on their W-2 forms for tax purposes, he said.

“We send out a letter asking how many times they drive back and forth,” Sisson said. “We add how many days they took a car home and we get that amount and use that to add to their W-2 forms for their taxes. We’ve been doing that for years.

“Driving back and forth from home and work is the only thing,” he added. “We don’t allow personal trips.”

Twenty-two of the 26 North Little Rock employees who drove a vehicle to and from their home to work did it 190 or more days last year, according to a list supplied by the city.

The five employees who drove a city vehicle home last year the most, and the amount of days they used one, were:

Harold Ford, sanitation director, 244 days.

Mike Russ, Electric Department general manager, 234 days.

Larry Epperson, a code enforcement officer, 228 days

Margaret Powell, city administration director, 228 days.

Don Wood, a code enforcement officer, 224 days.

Sgt. Terry Kuykendall, a spokesman for the North Little Rock Police Department, didn’t have immediate access to fleet records on Monday but said that the department policy is “If you live inside the county, you can take your vehicle home. If you live outside the county, you can take your vehicle home, but you have to pay mileage of 40 cents per mile.”

“Let me do the math,” he said. “A round trip of 44 miles is $17.60, so yes, it’s 40 cents a mile. And it’s to the main Police Department on Pershing [Boulevard] no matter what part of town you actually drive to.”

North Little Rock Fire Department Chief Steve Smith, said his department has eight vehicles driven home by employees, including the chief, assistant chief, three fire marshals, a staff captain and a training captain and the department mechanic, all of whom are on call.

Pulaski County also allows on-call employees to take a vehicle home.

Barbara Richard, director of the county’s Road and Bridge Department said she oversees 19 such vehicles, including hers. She said her fleet in total includes about 130 vehicles that could be driven home, not counting heavy equipment.

“Every one of those 19 are on call,” Richard said. “We have a rotating schedule where some are on call an entire week plus the weekend. At the same time, if there’s a disaster, such as a tornado, ice storm or flooding, all 19 must work. It’s part of their job requirement.”

Sherman Smith, Pulaski County’s public works director, also drives a vehicle included in the 19 Road and Bridge Department vehicles allowed to be driven home.

Smith said there are three vehicles assigned to the Planning and Development Department but only the director drives one home “because he’s also on call.” There are three vehicles assigned to animal services and two are taken home “because they’re on call at night for emergencies,” Smith said.

“There are six or seven in the Office of Emergency Management,” Smith said. “The director takes a vehicle and whoever is on call for the night takes one. And the director of the Sanitation Department takes one.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/27/2010

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