Missing gas card a conundrum to fire department: Records show it's still in use

Originally published in the Texarkana Gazette and on writeforarkansas.org on Aug. 8, 2011.

A Miller County Rural Volunteer Fire Department credit card that no one seems able to find has been used to purchase several thousand dollars in fuel since 2009, records show.

More than $3,000 was charged to the EZ Mart fuel card assigned to Trinity VFD’s Rehab 51 vehicle during 2009, 2010 and April and May of 2011, according to monthly invoices maintained by the countywide department.

Records for the first three months of 2011 are under review by state auditors, and records from June have not been filed. Trinity Chief Ronnie Sterling said he doesn’t know who made the purchases.

“That card is in Bright Star, and that vehicle is in Bright Star,” Sterling said. “We never put it into service.”


Trinity owned the rehab vehicle for several years until summer 2010, when it was transferred to Bright Star VFD.

Miller County Rural VFD had 38 active EZ Mart fuel cards divided between its nine stations. Since many stations purchase fuel elsewhere, the majority of the cards are used only once every few months, according to a December 2010 list of active cards and their last date of use.

Trinity’s rehab card is by far the most active, used five times in some months.

Fuel charges, unlike most purchases made by individual stations, are split equally between the nine units and paid from their share of county sales tax.

During the time Trinity owned the rehab vehicle, it spent time at at least two other Miller County stations and one individual’s house while it was being painted and rebuilt, Sterling said. The card, which records show was used more than 50 times during the period, presumably remained with the vehicle until it was transferred to Bright Star.

However, Bill Oliver, the Bright Star member who picked up the vehicle from Trinity, said he is fairly certain that no fuel card accompanied the vehicle.

Bright Star Chief Michael Cornett said he doesn’t think the station has ever had the card.

“I don’t have any idea,” he said. “I think the last time we got new cards for everything, I think it got a new card.”

All of the purchases on the rehab card—as well as on Trinity’s six other cards—were made at Texarkana, Ark., EZ Mart stations, two on East Street and one on Arkansas Highway 245.

Oliver doubts that anyone at Bright Star, which occupies the far southwestern corner of Miller County, would travel 20 or more miles to fill up in Texarkana when the EZ Mart in Bloomburg, Texas, is just five miles away.

The rehab vehicle and Trinity’s four other vehicles run on diesel, but 95 percent of fuel purchases by volume on the rehab card since July 2009 are for unleaded gasoline.

The unleaded purchases on the rehab card, which total more than $2,600, began about a year before the vehicle was transferred to Bright Star and have continued at least through May.

Sue Green, Miller County Rural VFD recorder/treasurer, controls the EZ Mart accounts and pays the bill each month. She said she was under the impression that Trinity’s rescue truck used unleaded gas and was the source of the charges.

After distributing the cards, Green said she has no way of keeping track of them.

“As far as I know, that’s up to the chiefs to keep up with that,” she said.

Trinity has six other cards—four assigned to the department’s vehicles and two assigned to the station’s chief and captain. Almost $500 in unleaded gas has been charged to the cards over 26 months. Sterling said the fuel was for each truck’s gas-powered pump and a gas-powered fan on the fire engine.

However, he can’t account for any of the charges on the rehab card.

“My guess is it got swapped up with someone who’s got a gas truck,” Sterling said.
George Goynes, Miller County Rural VFD chairman, said that if the card cannot be found, he will convene a meeting of the governing board to review records and, if available, surveillance video from stations where gas was purchased.

The five-member governing board, which consists of the chairman, vice chairman and three division chiefs, can investigate complaints and intervene in individual stations that fail to comply with department rules.