by James A. Bacon
Richmond Mayor Danny Avula committed himself yesterday to an “independent” investigation into the failure of Richmond’s water treatment facility, while Governor Glenn Youngkin said yesterday that the state would conduct its own inquiry.
“We are absolutely outsourcing this. We’re going to bring in a third party to do that investigation,” Avula said at a Friday morning news conference.
It wasn’t clear from press reports, however, exactly what would be investigated. The Richmonder framed the mayor’s promise in the context of answering questions about the timeline of events leading up to the water stoppages and steps taken to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control.
A statement from the Governor yesterday afternoon implied that the state’s probe will be fairly broad in scope.
“The commonwealth will start a detailed after action assessment and investigation immediately coordinated through the Virginia Department of Health Office of Drinking Water,” Youngkin said in a statement. “I know that the city of Richmond has announced they would do an independent assessment at the city level, but we need to do this work, because there are lots of issues, from operations to maintenance to infrastructure. We need to understand exactly what happened and what we need to do in order to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
A starting point for any investigation is the fact that city officials put off replacing a key component, the water treatment plant’s switchgear, for eight years. The failure of that piece of equipment led to catastrophic flooding within the facility.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported yesterday that city bids for replacing the switchgear indicated that the component needed “upgrading” and “modification.” Solicitations were published in 2016, 2021, and 2022, but the part was never replaced.
The solicitation issued by the city in October 2016, obtained by The Times-Dispatch, shows that officials sought “modification of the existing switchgear” to ensure it could “automatically operate” the facility.
Officials also wanted to “replace … the existing controls in the … switchgear,” the records show.
The first request preceded the tenure of former Mayor Levar Stoney, who was sworn into office December 31, 2016, served through 2024, and now is campaigning for lieutenant governor. But the second two solicitations occurred on his watch. The degree to which his actions or nonactions contributed to maintenance underfunding office undoubtedly will become an issue in his campaign. Reports the RTD:
In a statement, Zach Marcus, manager of former Mayor Levar Stoney’s Virginia lieutenant gubernatorial campaign, pointed out that under state code, the mayor is not responsible for securing contracts with vendors.
“(Stoney) did not and would not be involved in any procurement decision per the Virginia Public Procurement Act,”* Marcus said, but “budgets Mayor Stoney proposed included funds available for needed updates to the switchgear.”
Any investigation should determine not only what went wrong mechanically but determine what went wrong from managerial and budgetary perspectives. Why was the switchgear never purchased and installed? Did someone make a decision to cancel the procurement, or was it one of those things that just fell through the cracks due to managerial neglect? Further, as I have written previously, any inquiry needs to examine the budgetary constraints the Department of Public Works was operating under. Was the City of Richmond underfunding infrastructure maintenance across the board, or was the switchgear failure a one-off?
Real Clear Markets commentator Rob Smith indicts the entire political class in Richmond. Virginia’s state capital, he says, is suffering “third world” malaise.
Our race hustling, low IQ Marxist mayor hired a DEI candidate to run the Department of Utilities, the first time ever a non-engineer held that post. Her major initiative was hiring other DEI candidates to work for Public Utilities. Incompetent boobs, hire other incompetent boobs and before you know it, there are more boobs than the runway at the Bada-Bing.
As bad as DEI is, what’s worse is the political class that initiates DEI policies. There should never ever be any reason to vote anybody into office that has not had a career in real world practicalities. Community activists, academics, government apparatchiks, non-profit do-gooders, clinicians, blah, blah, they generally know nothing other than the au courant platitudes of the bougie Bolshevik chattering class. In Richmond, 8 of our 9 council members are women, and the one man is a soy boy. Have any of these folks ever crawled under a house to fix a leaky pipe, changed the oil in a car, operated earth moving equipment or walked a police officer’s beat at 2 am in the morning? Have any of them started a business from the ground up and hired and fired dozens of employees? No.
Harsh words. They are sure to inflame Stoney, City Council, and senior ranks of the city administration; they are not designed to promote candid self-reflection. But if you look past his heated rhetoric, Smith makes an important point. Are we looking at something bigger than a piece of failed equipment, incompetence of a public works manager, or even short-sighted budget-setting priorities? Are we looking at the systemic, all-of-the-above failure of Richmond’s political class?
Peoples’ reputations and political futures hinge on the outcome of the Richmond and state investigations. Accordingly, we can count on the players to spin the facts furiously in order to control the narrative. I’ll do my best to guide readers through the ass-covering and blame shifting.
* The irony is rich here. Stoney circumvented the procurement process and, citing state-of-emergency conditions, personally issued a contract in 2020 to dismantle the Confederate statues along Monument Avenue.
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