University of Mary Washington Refuses to Produce Emergency Test Call Recording

University of Mary Washington's President Judy Hample placed an emergency test call during a campus safety walk to campus police last fall, but the university will not provide the recording of the call to The Free Lance-Star. The University contends the recording relates to a "criminal investigation" on the grounds that Hample's call would have been evidence in any criminal investigation, if there had been such an investigation. The University spokesman says no criminal investigation is on-going.

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Records detail abuse of Detroit's emergency checks

FOI at Work!
Detroit city officials used 900 emergency checks in just two years, most of them for questionable expenses, the Detroit Free Press reported. The newspaper obtained records through FOIA that indicated these checks were used to hire a public relations expert by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick during his scandal, to pay rent for the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center and even to buy fuel for city cars. Often paperwork was not filled out, which means it's unclear who authorized the spending.

The City of Detroit has regularly used emergency checks to cover hundreds of routine or questionable expenses, including thousands of dollars for a public relations expert hired by former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in the midst of the text message scandal last year.

The emergency checks also were used to pay off credit cards for Kilpatrick, make nearly $1 million in rent payments for the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center and purchase fuel for city vehicles. Experts say the actions suggest a cash flow problem for the city because money should be set aside in the budget for basic expenses such as rent.

The actions also are an abuse of an accounting practice known as quick checks, a process to provide same-day checks to cover emergencies.

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