SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A former Sacramento Public Library employee said he was pushed out for reporting questionable spending of public funds.

Anil Paul resigned from his position as the Sacramento Public Library's finance director last August.

Paul filed suit against the library in February, claiming he was fired for reporting activities he believed were unlawful, including the misuse of county credit cards.

"There has been evidences of the directors using their cards for their own personal use, such as getting their nails done, and so on, and not even paying the money back," Paul said.

Paul said he repeatedly reported concerns about payments to one county employee's own company -- now known as the Hagginwood investigation -- and told them the invoices were priced very high.

Two former library employees and one of their spouses are now facing criminal charges in the case. The library is suing them to recover more than $1 million in overpayments for maintenance work at the library's 27 branches.

Library officials say that Paul's lawsuit is baseless, and that he was not a key player in pointing out credit card use or overpayments.

"He was in a position that should have been resolving those issues. In fact, he played little role in terms of bringing it up, disclosing any information or any factual evidence of either of those issues," said Richard Teichert, deputy director of administrative services.

Paul alleges the library had no internal controls, and lacked accounting policies and procedures.

"What I saw going on at the library, it was something which was very blatant, total abuse of power, mismanagement, I would say," Paul said.

The library said policies were and are in place to manage 27 branches and a $36 million budget.

"No additional misuse of credit cards occurred after I arrived in May of '06, and in fact we have subsequently changed that policy to not allow any personal use of credit cards," Teichert said.

Paul said the library managers damaged both him and the public financially.

The library said it let Paul go for performance reasons, but would not elaborate.

The library director is up for a salary review, but the county supervisors have not made a decision.