The Centre City Development Corp. will change its internal policies on travel reimbursements for its contractors, seeking to establish a standard for what expenses can be repaid.
Fred Maas, CCDC’s chairman, said the agency’s contracts currently don’t have any standard language on travel reimbursements. For example, in one contract, Kane Ballmer Berkman, a Los Angeles-based law firm working for CCDC, has detailed instructions on what travel it can bill for. (It allows attorneys traveling by car to bill half their hourly rate for driving down and their full hourly if they’re working on the train or airplane.) In another contract, there’s no mention of billing for travel.
Maas outlined other tweaks in a memo to CCDC’s board. The agency will establish an audit committee that includes the board’s chairman and treasurer and the budget committee chair. The audit committee will hold regular meetings to review contracts, compensation practices, financial statements and any sole-source contract awards.
Maas said he’s addressing some issues that will likely be raised when a performance audit of CCDC is released. It’s due in June. Maas said he had not yet seen a draft of the audit.