Coliseum finance director earned Visa points on stadium upgrade

By Paul Pringle and Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times
December 10, 2011, 5:15 p.m.

Last spring, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum set out to upgrade the sound system for its new video board. The equipment and shipping costs were steep — about $270,000.

Finance Director Ronald Lederkramer could have bought the gear the way other government agencies do, by issuing a check from the taxpayer-owned stadium.

Instead, he put the package of high-powered loudspeakers on his personal Chase Visa card, charging it in installments and paying those off with government checks that he and a lower-ranking employee signed, according to records and interviews.

In the process, depending on which Visa he used, Lederkramer earned roughly enough redeemable reward points for a week at the downtown Ritz-Carlton, two Bulova watches or even a pair of first-class round-trip United Airlines tickets to London or Tokyo worth as much as $24,000, award schedules show.

What Lederkramer did with all those points is unclear. But experts say his actions were a breach of duty, raising questions of whether a conflict of interest — his stake in the reward points — influenced his decisions as an official responsible for safeguarding the public’s money.

“This is absurd and appears to violate every procurement policy the city of Los Angeles has in place to protect taxpayers,” City Controller Wendy Greuel told The Times in an email.

Read the entire story.

Advertisement