Billing Errors by Montijo Reported : Kansas City Paper Tells of Discrepancies by Ex-S.D. Official

Former San Diego Housing Commission Executive Director Ben Montijo, now head of the housing authority in Kansas City, Mo., was reimbursed $1,700 by his new agency for out-of-town travel, food and hotel expenses he never incurred, the Kansas City Star reported Thursday.

Montijo billed the Housing Authority of Kansas City at least $1,678.40 for meals and lodging in five cities--Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland--on the same days that telephone records show he billed the Kansas City housing agency for long-distance telephone calls made from his San Diego home, the newspaper’s two-month investigation revealed.

Reached by telephone in Kansas City, Montijo acknowledged Thursday that he cut some of his business trips short to visit San Diego and he blamed most of the discrepancies on “human error.”

“They were caused by the way the travel vouchers were completed, which was I didn’t complete them personally,” Montijo said. “I simply took the receipts and dumped them on the secretary’s desk and said, ‘Fill this out,’ and they were filled out.”

Montijo also said the errors “occurred both ways” and a re-examination of the travel vouchers shows there was “money that was due me that because of the errors I wasn’t reimbursed for.”

In its story, the Star said that, during repeated interviews over the last two weeks, Montijo could not recall where he was when.

“I’ve got my skepticism about Ronald Reagan, but remember what Ronald Reagan said when somebody said a year ago during the Iran-Contra thing,” Montijo told the newspaper. “He said, ‘Can you remember what you were doing on Oct. 19?’ ”

The questions over his Kansas City expenses are the latest controversy surrounding Montijo, a feisty administrator who was ousted from his San Diego job in February, 1987. He was let go after his credibility with local politicians was irreparably damaged by a string of questions about alleged sweetheart deals, travel expenses and the use of public monies to buy a $7,000 walnut desk for his office.

The FBI subsequently cleared Montijo of any criminal wrongdoing in connection with two complicated financial deals to renovate a Southeast San Diego apartment complex and to purchase the San Diego housing agency’s new headquarters.

Despite the lingering questions, the Kansas City housing authority hired Montijo as its $75,000-a-year executive director in September. On Thursday, his tenure was marred by the Star’s story revealing the discrepancies in travel-expense claims.

In one case, the newspaper reported, Montijo received $593 for hotel and meal expenses for a trip to Las Vegas from April 26-30. At the same time, records also showed that Montijo charged long-distance calls on April 26 and April 29 to his Kansas City office from his San Diego home.

During a trip to Phoenix on Dec. 23 and 24, Montijo charged $140 in lodging and meals to the Kansas City housing agency, the Star said. Telephone records show he made three telephone credit-card calls from his San Diego home Dec. 24, the paper reported.

Other overcharges were recorded, the newspaper said, for a trip to Los Angeles and San Francisco from March 17 to 22, when telephone records show that Montijo was in San Diego on March 19 and March 22, and for a three-day trip to the San Francisco Bay Area in January.