BOSTON (MyFoxBoston.com) — How was the Boston Public Library keeping track of embattled former president Amy Ryan's expenses?
“You have to submit receipts,” Mayor Marty Walsh told FOX25's Sharman Sacchetti.
But Sacchetti learned that Ryan did not hand in receipts for more than $15,000 in taxpayer-funded expenses on her library-issued American Express credit card.
“In the case of the library or City Hall, that's taxpayers' money,” said Walsh. “We need to be able to account for every single penny.”
FOX25 reviewed the last two and a half years, from January 2013 to June 2015, and found that Ryan charged nearly $2,000 for lunches at the library's in-house cafe and almost $4,000 in travel expenses to New York and Chicago, among other cities.
Expense descriptions were vague: A $120-lunch with a “potential supporter” and an $80 lunch with an “architectural colleague.”
When FOX25 asked for receipts, the library couldn't provide them.
“The library is saying, well, their policy is just to accept the American Express paperwork,” said Walsh. “Their policy's gonna change.”
Minutes after the interview with Walsh, FOX25 learned that library board chair Jeffrey Rudman, a strong defender of Ryan, had stepped down.
It comes one week after Ryan resigned amid the investigation into $630,000 in missing art that was found a day later in the room where it was supposed to be all along.
