Former El Paso city manager violates policy for travel expenses, uncovered in audit

EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — An internal audit of El Paso’s City Council and former City Manager Tommy Gonzalez’s Office on P-Card and Travel Review reveals alleged misuse of city funds.

The City of El Paso’s Internal Audit Department stated that the objective of their report was to:

• Understand the City of El Paso’s City Council and City Manager’s Office Travel Request approval process and Procurement (P-card) program
• Determine if travel requests were properly approved
• Determine if Travel Requests were properly approved for travel expenses
• Verify receipts support travel expenses
• Determine if purchase limits on P-card transactions have been followed accurately

RELATED: El Paso representative Cassandra Hernandez removed from city auditor’s lawsuit

In the audit, which looks into Gonzalez’s travel expenses from 2020 to April 2023, Chief Internal Auditor Edmundo Calderon listed several observations that prove Gonzalez violated city policies.

The first observation points out that during Gonzalez was city manager, his office made increasing numbers of P-Card transactions missing account number information and vendor description.

A part of P-Card user responsibilities includes having to submit the account number and vendor description for each purchase for the P-Card approver to review and approve each transaction made.

The audit also points out that Gonzalez had purchased airline tickets with his own personal credit card using airline points and received reimbursement from taxpayer money.

This personal transaction totaled to $2,672.01.

The transaction includes:

• Reimbursement for a hotel for $890.05
• Reimbursement for airline tickets with his personal airline points for $1,457
• Reimbursement for airline tickets which he purchased with Southwest Airlines Travel Fund Vouchers for $328.96.

This violates city policy because city officials are only supposed to purchase travel expenses with the P-Card and he falsely used taxpayer money for his expenses.

Lastly, Gonzalez’s office made 24 purchases for early bird boarding for Southwest Airlines flights, totaling $360 in the year 2022.

Per the City of El Paso’s Procurement Card Policy under ‘Unauthorized Purchases’ it states:

The following are items that are strictly prohibited to purchase: Airline Early Bird Fee

Out of the 24 early bird purchases, nine of them were for Gonzalez and 15 of them were for other various city staff.

The audit also found that multiple city representatives violated city policies with travel expenses and their use of the P-Card.

RELATED: El Paso city auditor sues city government, alleging harassment post-gas card audit

Below you can read the full audit:

Gonzalez was terminated from his position as city manager in February of 2023.

Upon his termination, he received a severance package of approximately $890,000.

This severance package was based on of his employment contract where at the time he was making about $42,000 a year and had received three pay raises within the last year of his employment.

KFOX14 reached out to Gonzalez for comment about this audit and its findings but has yet to hear back from him.

Sign up to receive the top interesting stories from in and around our community once daily in your inbox.