Oklahoma vehicle audit

(Oklahoma City-AP) -- Governor Brad Henry and State Auditor and Inspector Jeff McMahan are getting prepared to take a hard look at how many vehicles the state owns. <br><br>McMahan says he's expecting

Wednesday, December 17th 2003, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

(Oklahoma City-AP) -- Governor Brad Henry and State Auditor and Inspector Jeff McMahan are getting prepared to take a hard look at how many vehicles the state owns.

McMahan says he's expecting a request from the governor for an audit of the state motor pool to determine if the state is managing its vehicle fleet wisely.

Oklahoma spent 184 (M) million dollars of its five-point-six (B) billion-dollar budget on vehicles last year. That includes buying them, leasing them and operating them.

The governor and McMahan want a more accurate accounting of the vehicles in an effort to save the state what they say could be (M) millions of dollars.

According to an estimate by the Central Services Department, state agencies own 87-hundred and 45 vehicles for more than 36-thousand employees.

That's about one vehicle per four employees.

Add in higher education and that's an additional 19-hundred and four vehicles used by the 25-thousand and 819 higher education employees.

McMahan says most agencies report only a portion of their vehicles to the Central Services Department.