Neb. audit questions number of state-owned cars

LINCOLN, Neb. — More than 1,000 state-owned vehicles get minimal use, according to an audit released Monday, raising the question of whether Nebraska's government has made too many trips to the car lot at taxpayers' expense.That means about 15 percent of the vehicles the state owned during the audit period sat idle much of the time, according to the audit. State Auditor Mike Foley launched the wide-ranging audit of state-owned cars after receiving citizen complaints of vehicles being misused."When you see vehicles driven just a few hundred miles a month and used just a handful of days, you have to ask why you own them, why you pay insurance, why you maintain them," Foley said.One state official noted that the number of small passenger vehicles owned by the state has dropped over the last few years. And the University of Nebraska said the figures showing scant use of some of its vehicles includes specialized maintenance and utility trucks.The audit, which covered from mid-2007 to mid-2008, defined low-use vehicles as those driven less than 500 miles per month, on average. It did not give any estimate of how much money the little-used vehicles cost the state.An arm of the Legislature that researches the performance of state agencies and operations and then offers recommendations has decided to look into some of the issues raised by the audit.David Lechner, the University of Nebraska's vice president for business and finance, said the figures showing that about half of the 64 school-owned cars sampled in the audit get little use "could be misleading.""A lot of these aren't passenger vehicles," said Lechner. A 2003 Chevy truck owned by the university and used on just two days in June 2008, for instance, is used to haul hazardous waste at the Lincoln campuses. Two other vehicles mentioned in the audit are tow trucks used for crash tests.Lechner added that when showing how many days the vehicles were used, the audit included only two summer months, when university operations are much slower than the regular sch

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