Library probe costs Revere up to $25G

REVERE – The city is spending up to $25,000 to have an outside auditor assess the scope of misspending by Library Director Robert Rice Jr., who resigned in January.Private auditor John Sullivan will be paid from taxpayer money previously assigned to a library repair work account. Acting Librarian and library trustee Mark Ferrante said Sullivan has started sorting through receipts for purchases made by Rice dating back to 2006. Once that work is completed, Ferrante said Sullivan will begin making his way through items allegedly purchased by Rice, including a set of elephant tusks, now stored away in a library back room.Sullivan is examining 200 purchases totaling at least $40,000, but not all of the items may have been purchased for Rice’s personal use with library money.Rice, a city worker employed by the library since his teenage years, resigned Jan. 13, hours before Mayor Thomas Ambrosino requested an emergency meeting with City Council members to describe what he termed spending by Rice on “things with no relevance to the function of the library.”Rice, a Revere resident, has not to date been charged with a crime. City officials say he has been cooperating with investigators, partly because he potentially faces loss of his city pension in addition to criminal prosecution.A routine account analysis by the city purchasing agent and auditor uncovered the misspending and city financial officials dug deeper into Rice’s purchases in the week before his resignation.According to police, Rice bought some items using library money, returned them to vendors and received a check made out in his name, in some cases, as a refund. Sullivan is scouring Internet catalogs and letters from Rice to vendors as part of his probe.The audit will take about 300 hours to conduct and the city plans to send the results to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office.The city is paying for the audit out of an account designated for window replacement work that was never done. The library has major repair needs, specifically a boiler upgrade or replacement.”However,” Ambrosino stated in a letter to councilors, “the current audit is more pressing.”