Fayette County

commissioners will take another look today at a proposal that would put

purchase cards into the hands of county workers.

The commission

meets at 3:30 p.m. at the County Administrative Complex.

Representatives

of Wachovia, the bank that handles Fayette's accounts, pitched the idea

in October as a means of increasing efficiency and accountability. The

purchase cards would be similar to the ATM/debit cards used by many individual

bank customers.

"It will

save you time, money, effort and a whole list of things," said Ingrid

Kelly, senior sales officer for Wachovia.

Purchase cards

like the ones she is proposing, Kelly said, have numerous high-tech controls

on them so they can't be easily abused. A county official can be authorized

to spend a given amount of money per month, and a different amount per

transaction, and the card can be set up to pay for expenditures only in

authorized categories, she said.

So a worker

authorized to purchase only office supplies wouldn't be able to use the

card for travel, she said.

The cards also

could be electronically linked to the county budget, so a department would

be forced to stay within prescribed limits, said Kelly, adding that workers

would have to keep receipts and those receipts would have to be randomly

audited to prevent abuse.

Because it

eliminates the physical costs of receiving invoices and mailing checks,

along with the costs of employees who have to be involved in such transactions,

the purchase card can cut the cost of a purchase from an average of $50

- $150 to an average of $15 - $25, she said.

During the

October meeting, commissioners weren't quite ready to buy the actual estimates,

which are industry averages, but agreed the cards could reduce costs and

free up the time of some workers.

"There's

millions and millions of dollars saved by the federal government because

of programs like this," said commission Chairman Greg Dunn.

But Commissioner

A.G. VanLandingham asked that Fayette's own Finance Department study its

procedures and come up with estimates of actual savings that could be

expected, rather than using Wachovia's industry averages.

"I would

ask that we table it until a later time and get some figures that we can

deal with," he said.

Finance director

Mark Pullium said he would come up with those figures, but promised, "It

would save us hundreds of paper transactions a month."