L.A. Nonprofit Trusts Paid for Steak Dinners, Trips to Hawaii, Las Vegas, Audits Find

Two nonprofit trusts created by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and financed with more than $40 million from ratepayers paid millions to vendors without competitive bids, overpaid top managers and let them charge personal travel, gasoline and other items without filing expense reports, city audits released Thursday showed.

In five years, a handful of trust employees charged more than $660,000 to their publicly financed credit cards for things such as steak dinners and trips to Las Vegas, Hawaii and New Orleans, city controller Ron Galperin said.

However, Galperin said, auditors did not find evidence of criminal wrongdoing.