Washtenaw County leaders billed for travel overruns still owe thousands, records show

WASHTENAW COUNTY, MI – Two Washtenaw County commissioners personally billed thousands of dollars for exceeding their taxpayer-funded travel budgets have yet to fully repay the county, more than two months after receiving government invoices, records show.

Commissioners Caroline Sanders and Crystal Lyte, both Democrats, have outstanding balances due related to 2023 expenditures from “commissioner travel accounts” for trips to conferences and official meetings, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

MLive/The Ann Arbor News previously reported that a handful of current and former commissioners have surpassed the $7,000 annual limit on the accounts, triggering a requirement under county board rules they be held “personally responsible” for the overruns.

Read more: Washtenaw County leaders overspent travel accounts. Not all have paid it back yet

On April 1, Washtenaw County issued three invoices marked with a due date of the same day, records show, to Sanders, Lyte and former Commissioner Jason Morgan, now serving as a Democratic state representative.

The next morning, Morgan paid the county $485.34, related to travel account overruns incurred in 2022, a county receipt shows.

On April 17, Sanders made a payment of $379.63 toward her invoice, leaving $3,600 outstanding, according to a receipt. No payments from Lyte in response to the $2,125.08 invoice issued to her were included in the records, which a county spokesperson confirmed are up to date as of Monday, June 3.

In a brief interview, Lyte, a first-term commissioner representing a district covering a swath of northern and eastern Washtenaw County, declined to discuss the invoice, referring a reporter to her previous statements that she is required to pay the bill.

“It’s going to be paid,” she said.

Asked if she would pay the rest of the balance on her invoice, Sanders, serving her second term representing a district centered on Pittsfield Township and covering some of the Ypsilanti-area, declined to say.

“It’s already been used for too much fodder. I’m going to make people do the work, so if they really want to know they’ll keep checking back every month,” she said.

In previous interviews, both commissioners defended their conference travel using the funds, pointing to its relevance to issues of housing and homelessness that have preoccupied the county board this term. They were each recruited to attend conferences they didn’t seek out by county staff, and the county gave them no advance notice of their travel account overruns, they said.

Each attended the National Association of Counties conference in Austin, Texas and Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island in 2023, alongside other commissioners. Lyte also traveled for an American Educational Research Association conference in Las Vegas that year, and Sanders attended a landbank conference in Ohio, according to county records.

County administration has adhered to the county’s policies in invoicing commissioners for expenses over the limit, said county spokesperson Crystal Campbell.

Asked about the time that has elapsed since the invoices were issued, Campbell pointed to a lack of specifics around the timeline for payment in county board policy.

“The board rules don’t address what happens if a commissioner doesn’t pay within a certain amount of time, and so all we can go by is what the board rules say, and they just say that we have to provide that invoice,” she said.

County officials have also faced questions about travel expenditures by appointed county staff members this year, making tweaks to county policy governing travel after public scrutiny surrounding frequent trips charged to a government-issued credit card by county Racial Equity Officer Alize Asberry Payne.

Read more: Equity officer booked trip to Europe, 80+ days of travel with Washtenaw County credit card

The county commissioner travel accounts, also called “flex” accounts, are available to all nine county commissioners for travel expenses to conferences relating to issues faced by the county or the elected leaders’ responsibilities, as well as mileage and travel to official meetings, according to board rules.

They are used by varying degrees by different commissioners, with some not touching the funds at all during their time in office, according to expenditure reports posted publicly on the county website.

County board Chair Justin Hodge repaid the county $962.37 for expenses above the spending limit in 2023, records show. He previously told MLive/The Ann Arbor news he paid the sum as soon as he was informed he had gone over the $7,000 limit.

The yearly $63,000 fund for the board as a whole had more than $30,000 left in it at the end of 2023, according to the reports.

The report for 2024, current as of April 30, shows some commissioners nearly at or exceeding the $7,000 limit, though some expenses included in that sum are currently listed as “pending refund,” meaning those totals may shift.

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