Tollway watchdog finds thefts, employees wasting time

Employees stealing toll revenues and wasting time gossiping about colleagues via e-mail are among the incidents probed by the Illinois tollway’s inspector general this year, according to a report released Thursday.

Inspector General James Wagner’s office started five investigations in the first three months of 2011 and is working on 19 additional cases from 2010, including one involving an audit supervisor.

Toll collector Frank McKevitt resigned in February after authorities alleged he had pilfered about $3,400 by falsifying 4,249 emergency vehicle transactions between 2009 and 2010. In each of those instances, officials say he actually collected cash from customers but reported they were emergency vehicles, which are not charged tolls.

A fellow employee alerted inspectors after finding an unusually high number of emergency vehicles passed through tolls while McKevitt was working. McKevitt, who could not be reached for comment, was also charged by Cook County prosecutors.

The report also stated that a tollway audit supervisor and a clerk she supervised were both suspended for using tollway property for personal calls and e-mails mocking co-workers.

The e-mails included references to a tollway conference room as “the holding cell,” skepticism about one employee’s sick leave with the comment “yeeeesh,” and criticism of one colleague with the comment, “OMG can we throw her off the top floor yet?”

Other e-mails involve comments such as “I think (an unnamed employee) just offered to give (another unnamed employee) a foot rub,” and some with attachments including one entitled “jokes to offend everyone,” which contained racial jokes.

The audit supervisor was suspended five days and the other employee three days. Between the e-mails and records of personal phone calls, “it is difficult to determine how or when official tollway work was accomplished,” the report stated.

Other investigations that are ongoing include abuses of transponders, which are provided to tollway employees, and workers not notifying the agency when their insurance status changed due to death of a spouse. This may have resulted in the authority paying more than $51,000 in unnecessary costs, the report stated.

Sixteen investigations were closed between January and March.