OTTUMWA, IOWA -- A state audit of the Ottumwa Transit Authority that led to the firing of two Ottumwa Transit Authority employees, continues to cause problems for local governments all across southeast Iowa.
“What would you do, if the person that is controlling the purse strings, that’s in charge of the whole kit and caboodle comes to you and says, ‘Hey, you’re doing good. Here is a certificate of excellence.’ That tells me that Pam Ward was doing what Pam Ward was supposed to be doing,” said Jefferson County Supervisor and 10-15 Transit board member Lee Dimmitt.
That is how Dimmitt feels about events that have transpired with the Iowa Department of Transportation.
“They did not do their job at any time within this time period that they are talking about, and if they did to their job, they gave us a clean bill of health in all those years,” Dimmitt said.
Dimmitt feels that the DOT dropped the ball; saying that officials within the department failed in the oversight of both the Ottumwa Transit Authority and 10-15 Transit over the years; being that both of the transportation organizations were given the OK for so many years.
“Michelle said, screamed, ‘Don’t you blame this on me. It’s not my fault!’ Well, I do blame it on her. She is in charge. She is the one who is ramrodding it,” Dimmitt said.
The supervisor was referring to a conversation he had heard from other officials on the 10-15 Transit board. Michelle McEnany is the director of the Department of Transportation. Her department has been scrutinizing both OTA and 10-15 Transit for months.
Dimmitt and other members of the board feel that she and other state employees were holding 10-15 hostage when it came to a new contract. Both OTA and 10-15 had many meetings with the state. In past 10-15 Transit board meetings, it has been said that officials with the state would promise both organizations one thing in person, but it was a different story when they left.
“You have officers of the court, who were present in those meetings, representing their entities, that heard exactly the same thing, as well as conference calls,” Dimmitt said.
Either way, Dimmitt wants to see the audits in question. He wants to see what the state is auditing exactly and why. “The paperwork trail that I asked for, for all of the audits from 2006 to 2009, for those years that are in question, I haven’t been able to get those reports either,” Dimmitt said.
Moving forward, several county supervisors that sit on the board have brought up the idea of taking the Department of Transportation to court, saying that the money that 10-15 Transit owes, is really not owed to the department because the ridership numbers in question have never been presented to them.
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