Richmond city hall: out of control
City of Richmond finances are such a mess that Mayor Dwight Jones hired a special turnaround team around the beginning of the year to fix it. Now key members of that team, City Finance Director Paul Jez and Controller Leon Glaster, are bailing.
“I just realized that I wasn’t the right fit for the city at this particular point in time,” Jez told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “I had reached the point that I wasn’t happy coming to work.” The challenges, he added, “are far greater than … I could have imagined. If I had known last year what I know today, I don’t know that I may have made a different decision.”
The city is months late in completing its 2014 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. City officials have cited employee turnover, a lack of training and challenges in implementing a new financial system as reasons for missing the deadline. The city’s current external auditor, Cherry Bekaert, basically fired the city as a customer effective next year, citing a dysfunctional working environment.
Bacon’s bottom line: When the outside auditors and key players in the turnaround team quit, something is severely wrong in the City of Richmond administration. No longer is this a problem that Mayor Jones can delegate to someone else. He needs to forget about baseball stadiums, children’s hospitals and Redskins training grounds, and give his total unremitting focus to figuring out what’s broken and then fixing it. Richmond has seen more than its fair share of administrative scandals already. If city hall loses control of its finances, it loses control over every department in city hall.
— JAB
