BATON ROUGE — More than $7,000 in funds were misappropriated from BREC's books, a report released Monday by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor says. 

According to the report, two incidents of fraud happened in 2022.

The first, which occurred on Sept. 12, 2022, saw $5,918 in cash misappropriated by a BREC recreation manager. The report says that the manager who committed the fraud no longer works at BREC.

The misappropriation happened because, the audit says, BREC's facility rental and cash collection process lacked proper segregation of duties, with one employee having too much control over rental coordination, payment collection and cash handling without sufficient independent review.

"In addition, rental records, receipts, calendars, and deposits were not consistently reconciled and supporting documentation was incomplete or inconsistent," the report says. "These weaknesses, combined with limited management oversight and reliance on manual processes, increased the risk of misappropriation, lost revenue and inaccurate financial reporting."

BREC management said that it has transitioned to using cashless payments and aims to have this in place by the end of 2026.

Another misappropriation of funds happened on Nov. 20, 2022, the audit says. This one, involving the department's payroll, totalled $1,206. The facility supervisor accused of committing this fraud still works at BREC, the report notes.

The mishandling of payroll money happened because there were deficiencies in the timekeeping and overtime approval process, the audit says.

"Employee time records were edited after the fact, including adjustments that reduced or removed overtime hours. The same supervisor had the ability to edit, approve, and submit time records, creating a lack of segregation of duties and limited independent review," the audit notes.

To remedy these issues, payroll functions were moved into the human resources department, with policies being put in place to create journal entries if and when timesheets are altered, the report says. 

No charges had been filed or restitution paid at the time of the report's release, the auditor noted.

The auditor’s report also had four findings repeated from the previous year, including finding the commission failed to reconcile its general ledger accounting records promptly, failed to maintain a complete and accurate construction-in-progress schedule, failed to amend its Special Revenue Enhancement Fund budget when actual expenditures exceeded budgeted expenditures by more than 5%, and failed to prepare an accurate and proper Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards. 

The full report can be read here.

WBRZ has previously reported on issues BREC has had leading up to the appointment of Brooks Williams as the department's new superintendent.