By John D. Harden
Houston Chronicle
HOUSTON, Texas — The board of a northwest Harris County emergency services district has hired a certified public accountant to review the financial records of the Cypress Creek EMS to see if funds are being properly spent amid concerns about a lack of transparency.
Harris County ESD 11 board members hope that the CPA’s findings will put an end to an ongoing struggle between it and Cypress Creek over how best to use taxpayer dollars to fund the EMS efficiently. The EMS district covers part of The Woodlands.
The District 11 board says the CPA will provide a more comprehensive review than a year-end audit, which only provides a surface-level analysis, according to Howard Katz, District 11’s attorney.
“We want to dig a little deeper than what a traditional audit shows,” he said.
Katz said he expects the review to be completed within a week or two.
The Cypress Creek EMS is primarily funded by District 11 through taxes collected within the district’s boundaries.
Cypress Creek provides emergency ambulance service to about 600,000 residents. It covers a roughly 177-square-mile area that extends from east of U.S. 290 to U.S. 59 and north of the Sam Houston Tollway, including Creekside Park in The Woodlands.
District 11 provides about half of Cypress Creek’s $20 million budget. The rest comes from medical billing and ambulance rides.
Katz said the CPA will determine if Cypress Creek is over- or under-budgeting funds.
The move follows allegations by District 11 board members that the nonprofit EMS is not properly spending taxpayer dollars and refusing to release public financial records.
They say an outside auditor will give an unbiased review of the funds. But Cypress Creek officials maintain that they’ve been transparent.
“The board decided to go with an outside CPA to give an objective overview of the situation,” Katz said.
DA filed charges
Last October, the Harris County district attorney’s office filed misdemeanor charges against the EMS for “basically not making its nonprofit financial records available to the public,” according to Jeff McShan, a spokesman for the Harris County Attorney’s office.
The following month, the state attorney general’s office ruled that the EMS must release information pertaining to Cypress Creek’s operations that are supported by public funds.
In December, the Harris County ESD 11 board slashed $2 million from a $9 million budget request after a lengthy argument between the board and Cypress Creek. A few of the board members said they felt the request was more than what was needed.
During the same meeting a board member accused Brad England, the executive director of the Cypress Creek EMS, of using a credit card for personal purchases at places such as a lingerie store and expensive restaurants.
England said the allegations had no merit.
He said Cypress Creek is routinely praised for its service and financial health, which, he says, is one of the best in the state.
Ongoing struggle
A recent report by the McGrath Consulting Group, hired by District 11 to conduct an operational assessment of District 11 and the Cypress Creek organization, revealed an ongoing struggle involving a handful of members from the two entities.
The report states that a few District 11 board members were unhappy about how the organization was run, and cited ongoing conflicts between those members and England.
The District 11 board is composed of five board members who are elected at-large. The election of board members began in 2011; prior to that, they were appointed.
The Cypress Creek EMS has also been the target of several investigations led by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Texas Department of Health, Medicare and Medicaid. None of those probes revealed any wrongdoing, and England said he believes the CPA report will come back clean, too.
“We have nothing to hide,” England said.
©2015 the Houston Chronicle