I came across a great article on South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel about how cities are spending enormous amounts of money on credit cards in order to receive cash back rebates from the credit card companies.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the article explaining how much these cities expect to get back in savings:

• Broward County expects to earn $50,000 in cash rebates this year by charging $10 million to $12 million on government-issued credit cards known as purchasing cards. “It’s a great program and we just keep expanding it in ways we never thought of before,” said county Purchasing Director Glenn Cummings.

• Port St. Lucie is paying for a $24 million turnpike interchange and bridge on credit, getting $125,000 in cash-back awards, officials said. Davie bought $330,000 worth of defibrillators for the fire department on credit, earning a $1,650 cash award, said Herb Hyman, Davie’s procurement manager. However, Hyman couldn’t convince a company to take plastic for a $400,000 fire truck, which would have netted the town about $2,000.

I found this very interesting. I believe it is smart also because it is actually saving these cities money by using these credit cards. Ultimately, purchasing cards could become the rule in government offices.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 29th, 2006 at 10:56 am and is filed under In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.