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Bastrop council orders forensic review after public questions about ARPA pay and missing funds
Summary
Council members and residents pressed for records and a forensic review of city finances after public comments questioned who received American Rescue Plan pay and after confusion over a $600,000 grant; council approved a resolution asking for a forensic audit and tightened finance-document requests.
Bastrop City Council members voted to ask for a forensic review of the city’s recent finances after multiple residents raised questions about how American Rescue Plan (ARPA) premium pay was awarded and about missing or unclear grant money.
Residents at Monday’s meeting urged the council to release written guidelines describing who qualified for ARPA premium pay and why some former employees were excluded. City Attorney Jones told the meeting that public-records requests should go to the city clerk and that “the law requires a response within 72 hours.”
The push for a forensic review followed repeated exchanges in which speakers said they had been told different rules for the ARPA premium pay. At public comment, Jackie Kennedy said she was told the premium-pay guideline required employment from Oct. 1, 2021, through Dec. 31, 2021, and that recipients had to remain an active employee through Dec. 31, 2024, unless retired. Kennedy said she had asked the city clerk for written confirmation and had not yet received a clear written policy.
Council members also discussed a separate question about roughly $600,000 connected to street work; the mayor’s office said the money was “working its way through the portal” and not yet in the city bank account. Councilmember Bradford pressed for the amount to be shown in the minutes and budget documents so the council and public could track restricted grants separately from general revenues.
After debate, the council approved a resolution requesting a forensic audit and asked the finance committee to produce unredacted bank statements and related documents to the committee’s designee for review. City Attorney Jones explained that some documents might need redaction for legal or privacy reasons but that the finance committee must be able to inspect records in order to perform oversight.
Council members said the audit and clearer, routine bank-statement reporting are intended to give elected officials and residents a single, searchable view of restricted grants, ARPA allocations and general-fund balances going forward. The council directed staff to return with a recommended process and timeline for fulfilling the finance committee’s document requests.
The action follows weeks of public questioning at council meetings about how ARPA funds and other grants were allocated and recorded.
