Rogue Berkeley worker bought ambulance without approval: audit

A file photo of a Berkeley ambulance. A new report from the city auditor’s office says a former city worker committed the city to buying a $285,000 ambulance without proper approval. Credit: Emilie Raguso/Berkeleyside

A former city worker went rogue and bought a $285,000 custom ambulance in 2022 without proper authorization, and the City Council quietly and retroactively legitimized the purchase the next year, according to a new report from the city auditor.

The purchase exposed gaps in how the city goes about buying some of its most expensive hardware.

Scroll down to read the full report

City Auditor Jenny Wong’s office first heard of the purchase through a whistleblower program the office set up in 2023. The report on the ambulance purchase is “the first public investigation report” the office has issued through that program, she wrote in a prepared statement.

In late 2022, the Berkeley Fire Department determined it needed a new ambulance, and hammered out projected costs and specifications with workers from the Public Works Department’s Equipment Maintenance Division, which manages the city’s fleet, according to an investigation by Wong and Erin Mullin, who runs the whistleblower program. An unnamed, now-former public works employee went ahead with a purchase agreement for the ambulance.

The trouble with that was that the unnamed worker never submitted a purchase requisition or purchase order or consulted the Finance Department’s General Services Division, the only department in the city actually empowered to authorize purchase orders, according to the report.

City Auditor Jenny Wong. Credit: Ximena Natera, Berkeleyside/CatchLight

Purchase requisitions are a procedural step the city put in place to make sure purchases comply with the city’s own rules on competitive pricing and vendor selection, among other things. “This step was skipped entirely,” Wong and Mullin wrote.

The city worker also did not get approval from the City Council, something city ordinances require for purchases over $100,000, according to the report.

“To ensure the integrity of our Whistleblower Program, we do not comment on employees’ identities that are not named in public reports,” Wong told Berkeleyside via email.

Finance officials finally found out about the purchase 10 months after the fact, by which point the vendor — Washington-based Braun Northwest Inc., according to council records — had nearly finished building the rig. Braun delivered the vehicle but held onto the title to it until the city finally paid up, several weeks after taking possession. The council had to retroactively approve the expense in December 2023, after which the Finance Department issued a purchase order and the city paid Braun.

The council item approving the purchase — $284,974 to Braun, and $1,000 to the Texas-based local government cooperative through which the city typically purchases ambulances — “did not clearly state that the ambulance had already been built, delivered and committed,” Wong wrote in her statement.

Liam Garland, the public works director throughout most of the roughly year-long drama, resigned in November 2023, and LaTanya Bellow, at the time the deputy city manager and interim director of public works, authored the council item.

In their investigation Wong and Mullin found that some of the people responsible for buying vehicles and other hardware were fuzzy on who exactly was responsible for what. Moreso, there was no mechanism for workers who did notice things were amiss to flag the issues. They issued several recommendations:

The Finance Department should update its purchasing manual to clarify requirements

Finance and the Human Resources Department should update worker regulations so people know who bring possible problems to, and how to go about making purchases

Workers need more training on equipment purchases

The City Manager’s Office should keep the City Council in the loop “whenever a purchase moves forward outside of the established procurement requirements”

The City Manager’s Office did not immediately respond to a Berkeleyside inquiry Wednesday morning seeking more details on who set the purchase in motion and whether it had anything to do with their eventual departure from city employment.

According to a “management response” section of Wong and Mullin’s report, city leadership embraced their recommendations generally, but emphasized that there were no actual payments until after the council voted in 2023.

“This breach arose from an individual employe[e] bypassing established policy,” according to the section. “The existing internal controls were effective in catching the policy and procedure violation.”

Rogue Berkeley worker bought ambulance without approval: audit

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