A US$234.40 payment to Comfort Suites in Grand Cayman and a US$783.22 rental car bill in Florida were apparently charged to the Cayman Islands government in various witness protection/assistance efforts, according to the former Minister of Community Affairs.
Meanwhile, more than US$6,000 was paid on travel and associated costs for the study of a Missouri, USA-based juvenile detention facility that local government sought to emulate, but which it later ran out of money to build, former Minister Mike Adam told the Cayman Compass Thursday.
Mr. Adam responded to questions concerning a number of charges on his government-issued credit card incurred between 2009 and 2012, when he served as minister under the former United Democratic Party administration. He confirmed the US$234.40 payment to Comfort Suites was charged with his permission on Feb. 18, 2012, so that a social worker in the ministry who was a witness in a child custody case could stay away from her home a few days.
“She was a child advocate [on behalf of social services] and the father was threatening to shoot her,” Mr. Adam said.
Asked why the matter didn’t fall under the police witness protection program, Mr. Adam said: “We had to do something quickly to assist this lady and we put her in the hotel for a few nights. I believe there was police presence there for one night as well.”
In another, unrelated matter, Mr. Adam said his card was charged for rental car expenses and a hotel stay in the Miami area for the family of a Caymanian woman who had witnessed a shooting and was needed to testify in the U.S. court case.
A US$783.32 charge at Quest Rent-A-Car was recorded on Oct. 25, 2011, that Mr. Adam said was related to case. Again, the former minister was not present, but his permission to use the credit card was given.
“At the time, we did cover the transportation costs through the ministry,” Mr. Adam said. “In that case, I think, there were circumstances that weren’t ordinary.”
It was unclear, and Mr. Adam could not recall, if the ministry was reimbursed for the cost, but credit card statements do show a corresponding payment of US$785.71 made on the same day as the Quest car rental charges.
Missouri trip
Credit card records also revealed that the government spent US$5,122 on Feb. 18, 2010, to send a delegation of six people, including Mr. Adam, to Kansas City, Missouri.
Mr. Adam said this trip was to study a particular model of corrections and juvenile justice used in Missouri that the Cayman Islands government wished to adopt for use here to rehabilitate youth offenders.
“We all traveled coach, by the way,” Mr. Adam said.
The former minister said the Missouri corrections program actually paid for the Cayman contingent’s hotels on that trip, but another US$488.84 charge at the Westin in Kansas City was charged on Dec. 8, 2012, in a follow up visit.
In 2013, the cash-strapped Cayman Islands government abandoned the new juvenile justice center it was building in the Fairbanks area because of a lack of available funds, with new Prisons Director Neil Lavis questioning why such a facility was needed at all.
“With such small numbers [of juvenile prisoners], it would be wrong of me to build a nice, glowing 12-bed unit, which would sit there with nobody in it or one or two people in it,” Mr. Lavis said in a September 2013 interview. “Is that the best use of public money?”
Ministry of Home Affairs chief officer Eric Bush said about $1.1 million had been spent for the juvenile justice center before the project was abandoned, mostly on design and the laying of a foundation for the new facility. The original budget for the juvenile justice center was around $10 million to $12 million in construction costs.
When questioned about it in the Legislative Assembly, Mr. Bush said he couldn’t answer why the money was spent, since the juvenile center was an initiative of the previous government under the Ministry of Community Affairs, for which he had no responsibility.
Community Affairs Ministry Chief Officer Dorine Whittaker told the assembly that the previous United Democratic Party government looked at numbers from the courts that indicated some 30 male juvenile prisoners and perhaps five to 10 female juvenile prisoners would have been eligible for incarceration in the justice center. Mr. Bush could not independently confirm such figures.
Mr. Adam said Thursday that he still hoped the new juvenile justice facility could be built because he believed it to be best for the territory’s troubled youth.
“I still would like to see it go forward,” he said. “Right now, it’s on the shelf you could say.”
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Why do government costs always have to be in the tens of millions when they are building anything. 1.1 million for design and a foundation?. Maybe if they had sent the designer on the fact finding mission he could have copied some plans and specifications.
Everything government do seem to cost too much. I believe the failures rest with evaluation of goods and services for value for money. If you don’t have contracting officers in place who are knowledgeable enough to assess the proforma invoice, one could be quoted numbers that are far beyond industry standards.
And there are industry standards!..
What I know about Mike Adams, is that when it came to helping his Cayman people out of a bad situation, his heart was bigger than his pocket. A man of integrity and honesty a man who did not care about the color of your skin or if you lived in a shack or a condo. He treated every one the same with an aim to protect and serve.