Like most other Richmond fiascos, the current budget crisis didn”t just happen. The apparent problem and its repercussions, including hiring a quarter million dollars worth of damage control consultants, was caused by someone either asleep at the switch or someone deliberately falsifying information. The first could be an honest mistake, or it could be negligence. The second could be a criminal act. In any event, no one is being held accountable ” a common practice it seems in this city.
A request has already been made for the Contra Costa County Grand Jury to investigate the current Richmond budget mess. Anyone who believes this is a good idea should contact the Contra Costa County Grand Jury to urge an investigation. The more interest there is, the more likely the Grand Jury will take in on. The contact information is as follows:
Contra Costa County Grand Jury
Grand Jury Secretary: Ann Gardner
Room 2017, A.F. Bray Courts Building
P.O. Box 911
Martinez, CA 94553
Phone (925) 646-2345
In 1999, the Contra Costa County Grand Jury investigated the City of Richmond, primarily the Recreation and Park Department, Human Resources and the Finance Department. What they found was very ugly, and a number of steps were taken to clean up the mess. I don”t mean to imply that the problems uncovered by the Grand Jury in 1999 are still going on; as far as I know they are not. But, I believe there may be new, and perhaps similar problems, equally as serious city-wide. The full report and the response from the City of Richmond follows this email.
CONTRA COSTA COUNTY GRAND JURY REPORT NO. 9903
Contempt for Accountability: A Perversion of the Work Ethic in Richmond Government
BACKGROUND:
Beginning as early as 1974, the Recreation and Cultural Services Department of the City of Richmond has demonstrated gross mismanagement and a clear lack of accountability. These patterns have resulted in poor performance, a lack of professionalism, dismal morale, loss of income and a total disdain of productive employment standards.
FINDINGS:
1. Employees in the Recreation and Cultural Services Department are not held accountable for their job performance.
2. Performance evaluations are not prepared on a consistent basis, and there is no adequate method for identifying employees who are in need of training, counseling, discipline or termination.
3. Preferential treatment of long-term city employees by upper management (such as the blatant misuse of travel funds and allowing disgruntled employees to go directly to upper management without first approaching their immediate supervisors) allows circumvention of the organizational chain of command.
4. Managerial personnel in the Department of Human Resources recommend the promotion of their personal friends over better-qualified applicants for positions in the Recreation and Cultural Services Department.
5. The City Council encourages hiring locally/personally known applicants over better-qualified individuals from outside of the City.
6. Micro-management and preferential treatment by the City Council affects decision-making on every level of city government.
7. Some employees in the Recreation and Cultural Services Department demonstrate strong ongoing antagonism toward supervisors demanding accountability. These employees ignore instructions, leave the workplace at will and refuse to complete assigned work.
8. Upper management in City Government supports recalcitrant Recreation and Cultural Services employees by either demoting or terminating supervisors who demand accountability.
9. Insubordination on the part of some employees in the Recreation and Cultural Services Department has been the rule over the tenure of at least two of the last three managers of the department.
10. Some Recreation and Cultural Services employees who disagree with negative supervisorial evaluations and reports unilaterally remove these adverse reports from their personnel files, compromising the integrity and utility of said files.
11. Some Recreation and Cultural Services employees show a disregard for standard attendance policy as stated under Article 10, Working Conditions (10.2.3.), of the Richmond Management Employees’ Association (R.M.E.A.) Memorandum of Understanding.
12. Some employees in the Recreation and Cultural Services Department have arranged for rental of the Richmond Veterans Memorial Convention Center (the “Auditorium”) to themselves and others at arbitrarily reduced rates.
13. Many contracts for use of the Auditorium are made in which a fee, or fees, are reduced or waived, without documentation as to why the concessions are made.
14. Since 1974, the Recreation and Cultural Services Department has failed to maintain accurate and complete records of the rental and management of the Auditorium.
15. An internal financial audit of Auditorium rentals, ordered in May of 1998 by one of the few Recreation and Cultural Services Department managers demanding accountability, could not be completed because of the volume of missing records.
16. Revenue and cash control methodology are not written, and regular audits of revenue generating and collecting functions are not performed.
17. Although resumes are customarily part of an application for employment, some City of Richmond managers arbitrarily deny inclusion of said resumes in certain job applications to facilitate disciplinary and termination actions.
18. Discrepancies on job applications, such as lying in reference to prior felony convictions and completing or not completing college degrees, are treated differently from applicant to applicant and employee to employee.
19. Unqualified applicants are sometimes placed into positions contrary to stated city requirements, and arbitrarily promoted or demoted to positions with greater or lesser authority, responsibility and pay.
CONCLUSIONS:
1. Micro-management, on the part of certain members of the city council, has resulted in a pervasive atmosphere of mediocrity in the selection and performance of upper city management.
2. The Department of Recreation and Cultural Services is forced to perform at a less than minimal level of effectiveness.
3. The city council and upper management have not supported managers of the Recreation and Cultural Services Department in the Department’s attempt to establish and maintain control and accountability.
4. Diligent managers in the Department of Recreation and Cultural Services operate in an atmosphere of frustration, helplessness and extreme stress.
5. A lack of enforced policy allows disgruntled employees, with the concurrence and encouragement of the R.M.E.A., arbitrarily to remove negative comments and evaluations from their personnel files, bringing the integrity and utility of all personnel files into question.
6. Refusal on the part of some employees of the Recreation and Cultural Services
Department to follow stated attendance policy is the fraudulent taking of city government moneys.
7. Poor financial practices at the auditorium, a complete lack of adequate record
keeping and non-accountability for collections has resulted in significant unidentifiable loss of revenue.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
THE 1998-1999 GRAND JURY RECOMMENDS THAT:
A. accountability become the watchword of Richmond city government.
B. department managers operate with the certainty that upper management support demands for accountability.
C. steps described within the organizational chain of command be followed and adhered to.
D. personnel procedures governing promotion and salary increases be followed without preference regarding social status or length of employment of the employee within the organization.
E. personnel procedures regarding regular and consistent employee performance evaluations be initiated and sustained, and findings within these performance evaluations be used to identify employees needing training, counseling, discipline or termination.
F. employees refusing to perform reasonably assigned tasks, demonstrating ongoing insubordination and/or leaving the work area before the end of the contracted workday be immediately counseled and disciplined, and if corrective requirements are not heeded, proper procedures leading to termination be initiated.
G. requirements for promotion or transfer include specific experience, education, required licenses or certification and identified levels of proficiency.
H. the hiring of job applicants be accomplished through adherence to specific written standards and requirements.
I. a definitive statement providing for the inclusion of resumes into job applications,
per standard business practices, be incorporated into personnel specifications for hiring.
J. the City Council adopt a prohibition regarding micro-managing of departmental hiring, firing and decision making.
K. all future rentals of the Auditorium be made using an established schedule of fees and services.
L. funds received by the Recreation and Cultural Services Department be handled according to standard principles of accounting.
M. yearly audits of funds received and spent in operation of the Recreation and Cultural Services Department be performed.
N. access to personnel files by employees be allowed only when authorized by the individual department manager or the manager of the personnel department, and then only in the presence of said manager. Accolades and criticisms in personnel files become part of the permanent record for that employee.
Contempt for Accountability: A Perversion of the Work Ethic
in Richmond Government
BACKGROUND
Beginning as early as 1994, the Recreation and Cultural Services Department of the City of Richmond has demonstrated gross mismanagement and a clear lack of accountability. These patterns have resulted in poor performance, a lack of professionalism, dismal morale, loss of income and a total disdain of productive employment standards.
FINDINGS
The nineteen Findings deal with a variety of inappropriate personnel management practices, lack of accountability for employee performance, insubordinate actions by some employees, improper use of and financial accountability for auditorium rentals and several other financial deficiencies.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The Report contains fourteen Recommendations dealing with employee accountability; maintaining a proper chain of command structure; initiating, improving and emphasizing proper personnel procedures within a full range of Human Resource responsibilities, including, performance review, promotion, hiring, counseling and discipline; and improving management and financial controls over the use of the auditorium.
RESPONSE
The City provided a lengthy response, disagreeing with five of the Findings, partially disagreeing with ten and agreeing with four. Its response provides information on current practices and how these practices will be changed through new policies and procedures and in an Administrative Policy Manual (a draft of which was provided with the response).
The City addressed each Recommendation in detail and, with only one exception, stated the Recommendation was either being or has been implemented, referencing the draft Administrative Policy Manual as its principal vehicle. The single exception was on Recommendation 10 regarding micro-management of departmental hiring, firing and decision making. In this exception, the City stated that the recommendation required further analysis by the City Council”s Rules and Procedures Sub-Committee. (Penal Code 933(c) requires that said analysis be completed and returned to the Presiding Judge of the Superior Court within six months of receipt of the report. By letter dated May 4, 2000, the City of Richmond was reminded to provide the required response to Recommendation 10 within 30 days).