City of Fate leaders explain why audits were four years behind

By J.J. Smith. The recent sentencing of former City of Fate secretary Sandra Lobban for stealing between $1,500 and $20,000 and subsequent court order requiring her to pay the City back $7,165.58 has left many area residents shaking their heads wondering how she could get away with stealing that much – and maybe even more - without anyone realizing it.

One answer is that apparently no one was really watching closely.

When Lobban retired in June, 2008, the Fate City Council was four full years behind approving audits of financial records.

According to Fate City Manager Vicki Mikel, she doesn’t know why the audits were so far behind when she was hired in November, 2008, the same month that Fate voters made it a “Home Rule” City.

“You’ll have to ask the Mayor and City Council members about that,” she said.

Mikel said one of her first assignments given by Mayor Bill Broderick and the six-member City Council was to bring the audits up-to-date as soon as possible.

Now, after working hard for the past year, she said the approved audits are only one year behind and by Sept. 30 all audits will be completely caught up for the start of the new fiscal year.

She added that the required 10-month Sheriff’s Department investigation into Lobban’s activities didn’t help matters because it brought their auditing work to a complete halt.

So why were the audits so far behind in the past, perhaps allowing Lobban to steal even more money than Mikel and auditing clerk Stephanie Fouquette could find receipts for?

For that matter, did former City Secretary Eddie Sturgal – who succeeded Lobban – steal any funds from Fate, since he was convicted in 2009 of stealing public funds from Lowry Crossing in Collin County before he came to work in Fate? In other words he was a convicted thief when he came to Fate but nobody here yet knew it.

Finally, why did former Fate Mayor and first City Manager Gerry Boren not bring audits forward for Council approval between 2003 and when he resigned, July 23, 2007?

According to current Mayor Bill Broderick, who served on the City Council from May, 2003, until he was elected Mayor in May, 2008, the problem was that the Council didn’t really run the City at the time – before “Home Rule” began. City Manager Gerry Boren did.

“We just assumed that all was well,” Broderick said. “Audits were never on the agenda and never discussed. We just assumed the City was doing it,” he said, referring to City Manager Boren and Secretary Lobban.

“As a ‘General Law’ City, the Council couldn’t act since we were not being asked. We had no responsibility as a governing body. That’s what the City Manager was there for.”

He said the Council really just set goals at the beginning of the year and measured performance throughout the year.

Council member Steve Skipworth agreed.

“We were given the understanding that we weren’t that far behind by the City Manager,” he said. “Once we began to realize there might be a problem, we were led to believe it was being taken care of.”

He added there were other problems, too, at the time but with such a small staff there was only so much they could do.

“It just snowballed,” he said. “It took us a while to find the problems.”

Former Mayor David Hill, who preceded Broderick from May, 2003 – May, 2008, said that he tried for four years to get former city manager Gerry Boren to complete the audits and bring them to the City Council for approval but Boren always had an excuse why the audits weren’t completed.

“While I was Mayor, before Fate became a Home Rule City in November, 2008, I had no vote on the Council and could only bring things to the Council and try to get them to act on things. But they had the votes.”

“I was always asking Boren,” he added, ‘Where are the audits?”

“That’s true,” said Broderick. “Everybody knew that Boren and Hill were not getting along, so when I heard that Boren resigned I was not surprised.”

“Hill did his best to try to get Boren to complete the audits,” said Skipworth.

Boren was the Mayor from 1999 to 2001, and then stepped down to take the paid position of City Manager in 2002 – which Hill said Boren basically created for himself. He has been serving as the City Manager in Gun Barrel City since leaving Fate in 2007.

Now looking back, Broderick, Skipworth and Hill said they all saw signs of financial problems but the Council just couldn’t do much about it.

“An entire fiscal year was there one day (on the computer) and not the next,” said Broderick. “Sandra kept putting things off. She wasn’t interested. Now we know why.”

“When Boren left, he completely wiped out all of the computer files and programs on his computer,” said Hill. “It was a blank screen. He didn’t leave diddly-squat on it!”

Skipworth said, “The records were just a mess. Of course, you have to remember that Lobban’s husband had just passed away about a year before she retired and her job performance had dropped. At the time we just didn’t want to make her life any harder than it already was.”

Mikel said that before fiscal year 2007, when all the financial records became computerized, they were all kept with pencil and paper by Lobban, under Boren’s supervision.

“During our investigation, her records were such a mess that we finally had to just stop trying to decipher them so we could move forward,” she said, explaining that they had to stop at some point so the audits could be brought up to date.

Broderick, Skipworth and Hill agree that more money may have been stolen than what has been accounted for but there’s just no way to prove it at this point, since Lobban’s hand records were in such bad shape and Borne erased his computer records.

There’s just no evidence.