(COLORADO SPRINGS) — The Office of the Colorado Springs City Auditor found financial inconsistencies in a recently completed audit of the Colorado Springs Police Department’s (CSPD) towing pilot project, an undertaking to move vehicles from the City’s impound lot to a vendor storage yard.
According to the official report, the goal of the evaluation was to determine whether charges submitted by a vendor, who was already contracted to tow non-evidentiary and abandoned vehicles to its lot, were consistent with both the terms of their contract with the city and the regulatory framework that governs towing services. To do so, the office sampled 40 payments to verify the accuracy of charges and identify any irregularities.
In the audit, the office said, “During our audit, City personnel informed us that the tow vendor had previously disclosed submitting duplicate invoices for CSPD. These duplicates were embedded within resubmitted billing statements intended to correct invoice errors and were difficult to identify due to inconsistent formatting when the data was entered into the City’s accounts payable system. Although the vendor reimbursed the City for the overpayments, the disclosure raised concerns.”…