A memorandum from Robinson, Farmer, Cox Associates regarding the Piedmont Regional Jail Authority (PRJVA) audit cites 24 overnight stays at the Hilton Garden Inn in Glen Allen throughout the fiscal year ending on June 30, 2017 with only three charges including a documented purposed.

“Management had various travel expenses throughout the year with no documented purpose of the business trip or personnel involved,” officials cite in the memorandum. “Hotel charges were paid with jail credit cards with little support other than hotel bills, and a travel expense detail form was not utilized. In addition, almost every hotel room throughout the years was booked under the superintendent’s name, making it difficult to ascertain who occupied the rooms.”

The memorandum details instances in which hundreds and, cumulatively, perhaps thousands of dollars in excessive charges were made.

The memorandum cites that the jail’s travel policy states any reduction rates or free service received from public facilities by persons utilizing the jail’s credit cards are reimbursed to the jail, not the individual.

If employees of PRJVA have excessively spent hundreds and thousands of dollars, and if they’ve done it with knowledge that they were purposefully going against jail policy, then they should be removed immediately.

A committee will review this audit and rightfully so.

It’s not just that these are tax dollars, it’s that they are the tax dollars from all of the local counties that use the jail, Lunenburg included. This is something that deserves to be looked at to the most intense degree.