Consultants find too much money for library district

Friday, April 9, 1999 | 10:27 a.m.

A consulting firm that uncovered tens of thousands of dollars in overpayments by the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District to Sprint apparently was too good at its job and has been ordered to put its cost-saving efforts on hold.

Hanks Associates, a telecommunications cost-reduction auditing service, found more than $60,000 that Sprint has agreed to refund to the district.

According to a two-year contract that began last July, Hanks' payment is half of what it recoups -- $30,000.

That still leaves the library district with $30,000 in found money, but the success has put the district on the wrong side of state law.

The amount it now owes Hanks is more than it is allowed to pay without going through a formal bid process -- $25,000.

The two-year contract, signed by former library district purchasing manager Stan Colton, who recently resigned, may also violate state law.

So Hanks has been told to stop looking for ways to save the district money, lucrative as it may be for both parties.

The company found two major sources of overpayments:

* The library district had been charged $23,500 over five years for phone service to a building on Maryland Parkway it no longer occupied.

* The district was not taking advantage of the government rate for phone service, about $180 a month versus the $1,000-a-month business rate it was paying.

"With growth and movement, it's easy for 3, 4 or 5 percent of the lines to get lost in the shuffle," said Michael Zomlefer, information resource manager for the library district.