by Jon Baliles

With all of the issues facing Richmond on a daily, monthly, and annual basis and limited funds to address them, Mayor Danny Avula has decided as City Council debates his new proposed budget, he also wants to update the city’s pay plan with a five-pound bag of sugar to sweeten and fatten any future severance packages for selected positions.

Avula’s new proposal redefines the hyphenated word “tone-deaf” and it would create a new top tier of “senior executives” who would be eligible for a year’s severance pay (52 weeks) no matter how long they work for the city. Current city policy offers a severance package for top officials up to 36 weeks (nine months) of pay if they have at least 15 years of service (with some exceptions for those with decades-long service).

Avula’s spokeswoman Mira Signer said earlier this week, “The Mayor agreed to revisit and improve the severance policy for some senior employees. The proposed policy is based on best practice standards, and is a recruiting tool that will help attract top talent to very senior roles. All councilmembers were briefed on the proposed policy.”

Chief Administrative Officer Odie Donald II defended the proposal at Monday’s Council budget hearing and said, “This is something that occurs in many of your best-run cities around the country.” Of course, most cities that have a similar policy do not have week-long water plant failures, meals tax fiascos, or almost $100 million in uncollected taxes. Some cities have some of those type of problems but we seem to have ALL of them, despite raising salaries enormously in the last six years and now we are told fat severances are the missing key that will fix all that, but I digress.

Under the proposal, a “senior executive” could be hired and come in and work for two or four years and decimate — just as a hypothetical — say, the Finance Department and then leave to go elsewhere with a pay package exceeding their salary on the way out the door (the last Finance Director made about $240,000) while the problems are all left behind to clean up.

Chief Administrative Officer Odie Donald said at the meeting such severance packages would help the city “to be best-in-class as a model employer.” He added that it would offer a potential top executive protection “if it doesn’t work out in a very politicized environment;“ he also said, “This is a tough environment to work in. I can tell you that myself. It’s just not easy.”

It’s not unusual for contracts to be negotiated with more benefits and add-ons for unclassified positions (like Department Directors) that are “at will” and can be ended without any of the job protections most other city workers have. Unclassified jobs are more easily at risk if they screw up, but the city has a bad track record of not firing people when they need to be, and if they are “let go” it is almost always accompanied by a severance package and a “separation agreement” that usually stipulates no stories or exposés about their city service. The current and past administration have fought tooth and nail to keep any of those agreements from seeing the light of day in any meaningful way (more on this below). If the reason for separation and a severance is all done behind closed doors and remain in a vault forever, then it is just a giveaway with no accountability or explanation to the public about the problems for the separation or any possible solutions.

The whole point of a pay plan is to set limits on pay, and the reason we (supposedly) have severance rules for employees is to not to turn hiring power into a giveaway. It is supposed to be used to find the people with the energy and commitment to fix the problems and handle and manage the day-to-day handling of so many vital city departments. Good talent is needed and we need to attract good talent, but there also have to be boundaries because without any it just becomes a wasteful giveaway.

The CAO also took a moment to toot his own horn at the meeting and said he was among “the most sought-after administrators in the country” and he would not accept a local government contract if it didn’t guarantee a full year of severance. He didn’t. Donald is paid $365,000 and negotiated a contract with Richmond that guarantees a full year of pay if he is terminated for any reason other than malfeasance. His job is without a doubt the toughest in the city; however, that doesn’t mean full year severances should be reclassified for dozens and dozens of top officials just to skirt existing severance rules.

During last year’s budget, it was a sore point for some Council members (and a lot of taxpayers) that top executives who had received huge pay raises in recent years (some of whom got raises of 30-50%) also received the same percentage raise (3.25%) as all other city employees. According to the Richmonder, in 2022, there were five jobs in city government that paid median salaries of over $200,000 per year; that number had jumped to 45 jobs by early 2025. It used to be enough to field just one basketball team, now it’s an entire league.

Councilwomen Sarah Abubaker (4th District) and Kenya Gibson (3rd District) floated a proposal that would give raises to all city employees, but shrink raises for employees making more than $175,000 by giving them a raise based on the average salary of lower-paid employees. Under Abubaker’s proposal, a high-ranking city official making $200,000 would have gotten a $2,356 raise. Under Avula’s plan, that same official would get a $6,500 raise.

That proposal was lobbied against and rejected by the Mayor and allies on Council. Samuel Parker at the Times-Dispatch reported at the time that Avula argued that all employees should receive raises of equal percentages, even though across-the-board raises benefit high earners more than they benefit low earners. At the time, Avula and Donald suggested it would be unfair to treat employees’ pay and benefits differently based on their positions and titles.

The administration even put out a statement that read: “Equity is based on contribution, not just compensation level. Equity means recognizing and rewarding performance, impact and leadership across the organization. Applying an arbitrary income cap ignores the work performed by professionals and executives who manage complex systems, oversee large teams and budgets and bear significant responsibility for city operations and outcomes.”

We are told repeatedly money is so incredibly tight for our many needs, but it is readily available when it comes to salaries and severances. It was only last October when the Mayor said we could not afford to lower the real estate tax rate even a couple of pennies because he said a tax cut would jeopardize employee salaries, Richmond Public Schools funding, and capital investments, and if Council did that, “we would really have to figure out what we are going to cut back on.”

Avula and Donald now maintain there is no specific budget line to pay for these severances and Donald indicated any payouts would likely be funded through vacancy savings or other measures. “Will likely be funded” is a dangerous and worrisome phrase in the halls of any local government, but 10x in Richmond.

According to Graham Moomaw at The Richmonder, In a list of written questions about the Avula administration’s budget proposal, Council staff members asked what safeguards were in place to prevent budget shortfalls if a departing leader at City Hall were to OK “large payouts to senior staff before an incoming administration takes office.” The Avula administration has not yet answered that question in writing and it didn’t come up during Monday’s discussion.

We are also told over and over transparency is just oozing out of City Hall, but all of these potential severances would be “negotiated” by the Mayor and CAO. If people start exiting the building, the terms of those severances would remain private given the track record and trajectory in recent years. You might recall that last year when DPU Director April Bingham left her position a week after the water crisis, she was offered a separation agreement with severance pay in exchange for commitments that presumably would have prevented her from suing or publicly criticizing the city, according to Graham Moomaw at The Richmonder. Bingham initially took the deal, then backed out a few days later. After she rejected the offer, the city terminated her employment on Jan, 23, 2025 and two months ago she filed a lawsuit against the city.

Last year as the drama was unfolding, a mayoral spokesperson told CBS 6 reporter Melissa Hipolit at that time that Bingham “is not receiving a severance,” but would not clarify if she previously received a severance, and when asked further about it, refused to comment because it was a personnel matter. After Hipolit submitted a FOIA request whether or not Bingham’s separation agreement included a severance package, Senior Policy Advisor Megan Field told her “our search found no records responsive to your request.”

The city did acknowledge and share one responsive record to a similar request from Moomaw a few days earlier, which told him the document existed but said was being withheld as a contract settling public employee employment disputes, held confidential as personnel records under Va. Code Sec. 2.2-3705.1(1).

Ahh, transparency. Wherefore art thou?

The Mayor made a commitment since then to be transparent about severances and release the information on an annual basis, but his track record so far does not demonstrate much of an earnest commitment. It’s relevant here to also point back to last year when it was discovered by Samuel Parker that Mayor Stoney doled out 32 severances worth more than $950,000 on the way out the door, and Avula’s administration would not “disclose documents or answer questions on which employees, specifically, received those severance packages and how much each employee received.”

The Avula administration finally released the heavily redacted “information” two months later (covering severances back to 2017), but the Times-Dispatch was “not able to determine whether the payments comply with the rules that govern severance” and also said the omission of employees by name or their salaries prevented an analysis of “whether the payments complied with city code, which includes a salary-based formula to determine the dollar amount for which departing employees are eligible.”

The Stoney severances far outdid even Mayor Dwight Jones who, in late 2016, authorized more than $220,000 in severance pay, bonus money, and vacation payout to his top staff. The Interim CAO who took over when Avula came in said the public was not entitled to know about Stoney’s severances because they claimed it is a legal issue as the payments were part of employment “contracts … settling employment disputes.” Which, of course, is just an excuse to hide who got paid what. Those employees left because Stoney’s term was up and Avula was bringing in his own team (partially); they did not leave because of a “dispute,” unless they were “fired” in the last days of the last administration, but we don’t know for sure because there is no transparency and lots of unknowns.

We noted back in November 2024 that Doug Wilder was furious when he took office in 2005 and found City Council under the old form of government paid out over $300,000 in severance packages to the outgoing City Manager and Police Chief. He said back then the payments shouldn’t have been made “because they were not severed. When did we become so rich as a city that we could just throw money away publicly?” Wilder also pledged that year “you can be assured that there will be no such severance packages or sweetheart boardroom deals,” and when he left office four years later, none of his staff received a dime’s worth of severance.

When Avula came into office and found Stoney’s big payouts, he could have pledged, like Wilder did in 2005, that no one in his Administration would receive a special severance above and beyond the established city policy when they left the Mayor’s Office, and that public service is just that. It was an easy layup to be a different kind of leader, show an honest commitment, and rebuild trust.

Instead, he has chosen more of the same, and two decades hence, the “leadership” of the city is trying to sell us and tell us we are so flush with money we can sweeten the pot for potential hires and exits while at the same time obfuscate any potential future settlements or payouts. What the Mayor and CAO have proposed is an unfunded formula with a total lack of transparency or guardrails other than, “trust us, we need to attract good talent around here.”

Attracting and retaining good talent is obviously an important part of any working municipality (especially City Hall), but so is leading by example and being competent and having and setting expectations as well as standards of delivery. Simply paying out huge salaries and sweetening hires with a fat, walk away severance regardless of their job performance is a terrible strategy that won’t deliver needed change, much less success.

Jon Baliles is a former Richmond city councilman. This column has been republished with permission from his blog RVA 5×5.