An international public relations firm that had a $3-million-a-year city contract to improve the image of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power routinely inflated its monthly billings to collect more than it should have, former employees of the firm have told The Times.
The former employees of the local office of Fleishman-Hillard Inc. said they were encouraged -- and sometimes told -- to submit falsified time sheets to the DWP to make as much as possible from the municipal utility, which was considered a "cash cow."
"It was wrong, unethical and done on a regular basis," Diana Greenwood, a former Fleishman employee, said of the practice of submitting inflated bills.
"The attitude that was handed down to us was that you get as much as you can because these accounts may dry up tomorrow," said Greenwood, who quit Fleishman in 1999 after a year. "There was a monthly billing figure that we needed to hit, so if it meant making up stuff, we made up stuff."
Other former employees, who collectively worked for Fleishman during most of the last nine years, confirmed the practice.
"There was no ambiguity; People were expected to make up hours if we fell short at the end of the month," said a former executive. "There wasn't a person there who did not hear it that way. It wasn't subtle."
Richard Kline, a senior partner who took over the Los Angeles office in April, said Wednesday that Fleishman does not condone unethical or improper billing practices. He said Fleishman launched an internal investigation after City Controller Laura Chick and other city officials criticized its contract as costly and unnecessary.
The allegations of false billings brought to Fleishman's attention a week ago by The Times, Kline said, are new and also under review.
"What we believe from what you brought to us is that many of the billing practice allegations ... could have been a misunderstanding of management's direction," he said, adding that the firm's internal review was far from complete.
"If we confirm any of the wrongdoing, we're going to take appropriate steps. We'll take very aggressive appropriate steps. It goes directly against our company practice or our company policy to accept or condone misrepresentation of any client billings."
Kline said employees who have worked on the DWP account have said the allegations are "unfounded and untrue." Records are still being examined, he said, as the review proceeds. He added that Fleishman's St. Louis "leadership had no knowledge of any such activity."
