When Richard Liberto was business manager of the Penn Hills School District, the bus contractor used $260,460 in district fuel without paying for it, tuition paid to an alternative school was under-budgeted by $229,682 over three years and employees were permitted to sign out district credit cards for months at a time.
Those charges and seven others — all disputed by Mr. Liberto and his attorney — are included in the “Findings of Fact, Conclusion of Law and Adjudication” document that formed the basis for the school board’s unanimous vote to fire Mr. Liberto in November.
The Post-Gazette obtained a copy of the document through the state Right-To-Know law.
Mr. Liberto was placed on leave in March after the district discovered it was nearly $9 million in debt from the previous year and a similar debt was anticipated for the 2014-15 school year. In October, the school board completed a nearly $20 million bond issue to cover its two-year debt total.
Mr. Liberto and his attorney, Wayne DeLuca, deny all of the charges made by the district and have filed an appeal of Mr. Liberto’s firing in Common Pleas Court.
The firing and the appeal, filed in December, have taken place despite the fact that Mr. Liberto was hired as the business manager in the Wilkinsburg School District in August at an annual salary of $90,000.
In addition to the lack of oversight, Mr. Liberto is charged by the district with keeping hidden from the board the fact that the district’s audit for the 2013-14 school year showed an $8.9 million deficit and that he secretly contacted the state Department of Education for a $3 million advance on its state subsidies in January 2015.
In the appeal filed over Mr. Liberto’s firing, his attorney said Mr. Liberto “kept the board apprised of financial difficulties from as early as 2012” and that all deficits were discussed with the board and finance committee.
As for the fuel that was used by the A.J. Myers Bus Co., the district maintains that the company fueled buses used for other districts at the Penn Hills pump but did not reimburse the district. The district document said that Mr. Liberto, as part of his official duties, was to oversee the transportation department. Mr. Liberto said it was the transportation director’s responsibility to oversee the issue.
The district said the bus firm, when notified of the debt, paid $179,855 and the district is in the process of recovering an additional $80,000. James Myers, one of the owners of the firm, confirmed that his company reimbursed the district for the fuel and that he was uncertain why the payment was not made earlier.
Another charge involving the Myers bus company regarded a rental lease for space in a district building. The district said the board agreed that a lease could be entered for $5,000 per month, but the total was later lowered to $2,500 by Mr. Liberto. Even at the lower rate, only three months of rent were collected.
In an interview, Mr. Liberto said he cut the rent in half because the firm ended up using half the amount of space originally offered. He could not explain why the rent was not collected and said it was not his responsibility.
The district document said that after Mr. Liberto left, the Myers firm paid $21,198 in back rent and entered into a lease for $5,000 a month.
Another charge against Mr. Liberto is that he permitted the Arsenal Soccer Club, for which his daughter plays, and another soccer club to use a district field at a reduced rate. Mr. Liberto said his daughter did not play on the team that used the field and that he actually charged the soccer clubs more than district policy required.
Mr. Liberto said, according to district policy, any nonprofit group was permitted to use district facilities for free. But, he said, he believed the policy was being abused so he charged the teams to use the field.
The district document contends that the teams were underbilled and that it is in discussion with the Arsenal club over the repayment of $18,985.
Mr. Liberto is also charged with under-budgeting tuition payments to the Boyce Campus Middle College High School, an alternative school in Monroeville, which resulted in costs that were $229,682 over the budgeted amounts for the 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years.
In addition, the district document notes that it was notified in July that it is delinquent on a $56,131 payment for the 2013-14 school year and $44,987 for the 2014-15 school year. The document also alleges that Mr. Liberto paid cyber tuition bills to the Boyce program for students who were not Penn Hills students. It does not list an amount for those payments.
Boyce campus director Bob Patterson could not be reached for comment.
The document notes that Mr. Liberto’s wife works at the Boyce school — a fact that Mr. DeLuca called “irrelevant.”
Mr. Liberto is also charged with underfunding the debt service budget, providing $3.5 million for the payments, which was $6.5 million less than the annual payments owed by the district, and that he failed to make a $3 million debt service payment and didn’t tell the board.
As for the district procurement cards, the district charged Mr. Liberto with failure to place controls over who could use them and for what purposes. The charging document said that employees signed the cards out for months at a time and did not provide receipts for their purchases. One employee purchased a $358 water heater for his home, the document said.
First Published: January 23, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
