HARTFORD, CT – Connecticut state auditors said they can’t tell whether the state’s controversial privatization of a daily motor pool in 2003 saved any money, according to the Web site http://www.JournalInquirer.com. However, the auditors also said they discovered state employees spent $422,018 on car rentals in 2005, an amount nearly double the $221,032 they spent the previous year.

In a new review of the five-year, $1.5 million contract between the state Department of Administrative Services and Windsor Locks-based CARMAC Inc. — which operates as Enterprise Rent-A-Car — the auditors reported an overall 90.9-percent increase in car rental costs incurred by 36 state departments, agencies, and commissions in 2005.

Also, they found that the Enterprise contract was used not only for short-term rentals, but extended ones, “sometimes for months at a time” and contrary to the stated purpose of the contract.

They said the increase was most “dramatic” in just three state agencies:

• The Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, where rental car expenditures skyrocketed from $68,701 in 2004 to $218,427 in 2005 — a 217-percent increase.
  

  
  

• The Department of Education, where over the same period the expenditures jumped from $6,006 to $27,071 — a 350.7-percent increase.
  

  
  

• The Agricultural Experiment Station, which had reported no rental car expenditures in 2004 but spent $24,283 in 2005.