Hours worked and number of phone calls are directly related?

The News-Gazette ran a story Sunday with the headline, "Phone records show county auditor frequently absent." My professor for Reporting II lecture asked the class to read it and point out ways to improve the story.

The story relied on the Freedom of Information Act to obtain phone records of elected county officials, but the story also presented its findings poorly.

The second through sixth paragraph (pretty much the bulk of the story) basically lists the information found through FOIA. X number of calls were made by Y last while X number of calls were made by Z last year. This goes on. Safe to say, I got lost in the numbers. Also, The News-Gazette printed a table listing said numbers at the end of the story. Is it necessary to reiterate the same information in a chart?

The story's argument here is that auditor Tony Fabri was not at his desk making phone calls while his co-workers were hard at work making over thousands of calls. Fabri claims this is because he makes his calls from his private cell phone. He also said he relies on the accountant to do most of the paper work anyway.

Fabri sticks out like a sore thumb when comparing his number of calls made to those made by his colleagues. Their numbers range in the thousands while his stands at a measly 185 of calls made between March 1, 2008 - Februrary 28, 2009.

This makes me wonder if phone calls are directly related to the number of hours worked. I'm not choosing sides, but let's say the thousands of phone calls made by the other elected officials weren't work-related. The tables could be turned. Fabri doing work. Colleagues jibber-jabbering away while on the job.

So, I don't think it's legitimate to assume more phone calls made means more work is being done.

I make a lot of phone calls, and they're mostly to my mom about what I ate, when I slept and probably what I'll eat for my next meal. No work involved.

But, why is Fabri running up his private cell phone bill making work-related calls? Is he hiding something? This may be a bit of a stretch, but I can't help that my perception of elected officials has been tainted because of our very own Blago...