RICHMOND, Va. β Richmond city officials are grappling with 124 overdue recommendations for improvement from the City Auditor's Office, according to a report issued in November.
The recommendations span multiple departments, with some dating back several years β the oldest dates back to March 2020.
City Auditor Riad Ali lacks authority to force implementation of recommendations, and we asked both Mayor Danny Avula and First District Councilman Andrew Breton whether they expect recommendations to be implemented by target dates that are set by the administration.
"I think a lot of those things, obviously that is the goal, the goal is that we work with the auditor, we try to set a target date and then sometimes we get into the fixes and find out this is going to take more of a financial investment or this is going to take a longer runway, and so we work with the auditor to revise those dates," Avula said.
Breton suggested the administration may be setting overly ambitious timelines.
"I actually think the administration is maybe being a little too optimistic and ambitious with their completion dates," Breton said. "Now that is a really good sign, I think it means they really care about closing these and they want to close these, but the fact that they might not always hit their targets I think is understandable."
The Finance Department has the most overdue recommendation with 28, followed by Public Utilities with 19, and Procurement Services with 14.
"No one is going to be surprised to hear there are a lot of open issues in the finance department," Breton said. "We know that we have new leadership there, we have a new department head and a new DCAO in that department as well. We should expect to see a higher velocity of tickets closing there in time."
Among the outstanding recommendations:
- The City's Chief Administrative Officer should develop a spending policy to clarify appropriate use of public funds for non-essential purchases.
- The Richmond Retirement System should establish a formal process to identify deceased retirees and investigate potentially fraudulent activity.
- The Director of Finance should refund erroneously assessed interest on personal property tax bills from summer 2022.
When asked if there should be more urgency refunding a mistake impacting taxpayers, Breton said, "I think with each department we would have to have a hearing with the department head to find out what is holding up that issue. There are so many issues in this city and what this conversation allows us to do is to make sure, on an individual department basis, they can come back and report on that progress."
Despite the backlog, city officials highlighted progress made this quarter by highlighting how the city actually closed more recommendations this quarter than any quarter before under the current auditor.
Between June and October, Richmond closed 31 audit recommendations, with the majority coming from the Department of Public Utilities.
"I think what I am most proud of in this first year is really changing the culture within City Hall around how we see the auditor, and how we understand the auditor is actually a very helpful tool for us to get better and better as an operation," Avula said.
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