Richmond City Hall
by James A. Bacon
Fiscal Year 2015 in Virginia came to a close yesterday but the City of Richmond still had not filed its Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) for FY 2014, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The report provides an audited overview of revenues, spending, assets and debts critical to appraising a locality’s financial condition.
The City of Richmond is one of only three localities still to have failed to issue the report, the filing deadline for which was seven months ago. With a population of 218,000, Richmond is by far the most populous of the three, which includes poverty-stricken Wise County (pop. 40,000) and the town of Dumfries (pop. 5,100).
“A ten-month delay for something that should be a basic function of government is unconscionable,” said City Councilman Jonathan T. Baliles. “This is what happens when you ignore the fundamentals of government.”
City officials, reports the TD, have cited employee turnover, a lack of training and challenges in implementing a new financial system as reasons for this year’s delay. In other words, city officials blame dysfunctional management.
The problems did not materialize overnight, however. The city issued emergency procurement documents for outside help from an independent consultant to ensure timely completion of the 2013 CAFR. Payments to that consultant have risen from an anticipated $95,000 to $295,000 under March contract extension.
Shortly thereafter, the city’s auditing firm, Cherry Bekaert, fired the city as a client. According to the TD, partner Eddie Burke cited “a high-risk, dysfunctional working environment that ‘has continually gotten worse every year.'” Ask yourself: How bad did the situation have to be for a midsize CPA firm to turn down a $320,000 annual contract?
Bacon’s bottom line: As Baliles says, balancing the books is fundamental. Add this failure to a string of other spending and administrative scandals over the past few years, and it seems pretty clear that government in Virginia’s capital city is a mess. It wasn’t always this way. Long-time residents remember when Robert C. Bobb ran the city in the 1980s as one of the most effective city managers in the country.
Ultimately, it is the responsibility of one person — the mayor — to ensure that the city functions properly. While Mayor Dwight C. Jones is good at striking the right rhetorical chords on a variety of issues, he has proven ineffectual as an executive.
I admire Jones’ response to the controversy over the Confederate flag and other symbols of the Confederacy, including the statues along Monument Avenue. “Rather than tearing down,” he said recently, “we should be building up in ways that establish a proper sense of balance and fairness by recognizing heroes from all eras to tell a richer and more accurate story of Virginia’s history.” Those are the words of a uniter and a healer, not a divider.
But I’m concerned that Jones doesn’t have much interest in the nuts and bolts of government. Perhaps that is understandable considering that he has divided his time between his responsibilities as mayor, Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church and for a year, chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia. But when he does focus on his mayoral duties, instead of making sure the trains run on time, Jones has promoted high-profile projects like the Shockoe Bottom baseball stadium, the Washington Redskins training park and the World Road Cycling Championship.
Private investors are pouring money into the city. What most of them want to see, however, isn’t wheeling and dealing that rewards a privileged few. They want to see a city that does the things that cities are supposed to do. Like close out the books on time.
