Thursday, September 21, 2000 Convention & Visitors Bureau audit complete   By John W. Cox, Staff writer LONG BEACH An outside auditor's report on allegations of inflated hotel bookings was received this week by the CEO of Long Beach's convention bureau but has not been forwarded to board members, the city's auditor complained Wednesday. The report by the accounting firm of Ernst & Young should have been made available immediately to members of the bureau's board of directors, City Auditor Gary Burroughs said. He said he did not know how long the bureau's president and CEO, Linda Howell DiMario, has had the report. "(The accountants) should have sent this thing to the board, period," Burroughs said. He added that he expects to receive his own copy today and that he may release it publicly after meeting today with fellow members of the board's auditing committee. The report's completion and findings were not mentioned by Howell DiMario or other officials at the Long Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau's annual luncheon Wednesday. Howell DiMario could not be reached for comment later. The audit was ordered by Howell DiMario on July 28 in response to internal allegations of irregularities in recording the number of hotel stays booked by bureau salespeople. The audit was to look at the bureau's work during fiscal years 1998-1999 and 1999-2000. Auditors at Ernst & Young made Burroughs aware of their preliminary findings earlier this month. Describing them in a one-page summary, Burroughs said the bureau appears to have overstated the results of its core activity, booking conventions and hotel stays, by as many as 40,000 room nights, or about 10 percent of the total number claimed by the bureau. As a result of this overstatement, 10 bureau employees may be asked to return bonuses totaling $23,000, Burroughs said. At Wednesday's luncheon, aboard the Queen Mary, incoming board Chairman Chris Pook called the accounting problems a "hiccup." "We have a small glitch," he said. "We don't know the size of it, but we're going to fix it." Pook asked the media not to "harass" bureau employees in reporting on the matter, but to wait for the auditors' report.