November 26, 2007
Are Gandhi's Fortunes Turning?
In most any public or private sector job, losing $31 million on your watch is a surefire way to get yourself fired. CFO Natwar Gandhi's reputation for saving the city's finances has thus far protected him from what is to date the District's biggest corruption scandal. But his fortunes might be changing.
Buried towards the end of an article from the Examiner today on an investigation into the tax refund scheme that milked the city for anywhere from $20 to $31 million is the following gem on Gandhi:
...some City Hall sources told The Examiner that a consensus is emerging that D.C. might have to live without Gandhi’s services.
Will Gandhi be forced out? It's tough to say, and the "consensus" the Examiner alludes to is hardly coming from a firm source. Gandhi still enjoys the support of Mayor Adrian Fenty and the majority of the D.C. Council, not to mention the Post's editorial page and Metro columnist Marc Fisher, who yesterday chimed in to defend the embattled CFO.
As more details emerge, it has become more and more clear that while Gandhi has done plenty to help right the District's financial ship, some key oversight was lacking. Also reported by the Examiner:
In October, the D.C. inspector general reviewed three years’ worth of audits and reported that the finance office had been cited at least 13 times for having shoddy controls. The only D.C. agency with more citations was the health department, which was written up 16 times, according to the inspector general’s report.
It probably won't help Gandhi's case that Gregg Pane, who headed the D.C. Department of Health under Mayor Anthony Williams and into Fenty's term, was recently fired.
Will Gandhi's reputation continue to defend him from definitive calls that he should resign? Or will District officials decide that no good deeds can make up for a scandal of this size? The CFO can only be fired for cause if both the Mayor and two-thirds of the D.C. Council agree, though Gandhi has said that if Fenty and the Council asked him to resign, he would. We wonder: exactly how many Council members would it take to convince Gandhi to resign? If the mayor and say, seven council members agreed, would that do it? Nine? All of them?
|
Funny thing about those audit reports is that they went to every member of the Council. Did any of those members actually read that Auditor's report? Or any other Auditor's report?
Jack Evans should be getting lots of heat for failing to conduct proper oversight of OTR.
And as for the supposed "consensus", hogwash to that. The Examiner reporter is well known in the Wilson Building for his overexuberance in pumping his stories. I could count on one finger a councilmember who would want Gandhi out (let's call him "David C.").
Biggest problems with booting Gandhi: 1) There is no one waiting in the wings to replace him; 2) A nationwide search would have to be done to replace him, which would take a good amount of time; 3) A good chunk of Gandhi's top staff may leave if he leaves, thereby getting rid of lots of institutional knowledge and, probably more importantly, Wall Street cred; 4) He's still very popular with Congress and Wall Street.
I agree that Gandhi has major egg on his face because of this scandal. But I also respect how he turned this city from Barry-era near-bankruptcy to more financially secure and respected. And, in my mind, that means he gets to clean up the mess, fire all the crappy workers (again, another accomplishment of the anything-goes mentality of the hiring requirements of the Barry era), and regain his reputation.
There's plenty of blame to go around for this debacle: thieving workers; complicit and anti-snitching co-workers; clueless supervisors; inept and unqualified administrators; inadequate financial controls; clueless Council oversight; insufficient attention by Gandhi; complicit bank employees.
Yet the only person I trust to fix the mess is Gandhi.
Support or no support Gandhi should be booted faster than a rotten turkey carcass. Keeping him on is bad for DC's credibility and it's a pathetically sad day when you think he's the only guy that can fix the clusterf*ck that happened on his watch.
Anywhere else and he's already be gone--that's over thirty million lifted by one employee. When the numbers get that big and you or your hand-picked staff totally miss the boat, it's time to go. Is DC's self-esteem so low that we're afraid to hold anyone accountable? CFO for life--is that it?
OldPosterKnownAsCranky you forgot one very important component of your analysis. I would add you to the list of the problems in DC as you are happy with the status quo. Apparently paying this fool Ghandi over 2 million dollars over his tenure was not enough for him to put in basic controls to catch this blatant fraud. Heck, let's give him another 5 years so he can rape the taxpayers out of another 1.5 million in his own salary.
to the gallows ghandi
I agree that there is plenty of blame to go around. The biggest thing to me is that no one in that damn office reported a thing. Apparently one of these thieving ladies was making loans to her supervisors? First, this is just a really bad idea. Second, didn't anyone think this was odd?
There is simply no way that a ton of people didn't know about this. No way. And not one of them felt it was their duty to report it.
That pretty much says it all about how our local government operates.
Seems more like Ghandi needs someone solid in charge of oversight. Hopefully we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Doesn't the OTR have an ombudsman? I'd think any DC agency that handles large amounts of taxpayer money should.
The one bright spot in this was auditor Deborah Nickles who brought this to Gandhi's attention - maybe she should have gotten his raise.
"anywhere from $20 to $31 million"
the editor in me cringes at that range of $30,999,980.
Ghandi has my support, but man is this bad.
If he's willing to work on it, now that it has come to light, then he should be given a chance.
What alternative? Can anyone name one person who would want the job and be better (or even just as good) at it? Not that this is a ringing endorsement for Ghandi, but fire him and all you have is a new person in charge of the same group of corrupt workers.
No one is irreplaceable. And if this were my field I'm sure I could name dozens of capable people who would want the job -- just look for the 2nd in charge of an equivalent office in a bigger city or the person in charge of that office in a slightly smaller city. Ghandi's reputation is golden (at least until this month), but I hardly think he's the only beancounter in the country who could have managed the District's turnaround (and some of those other people might have even caught on to refund checks being sent out to fake companies on their watch).
I'll gladly take the job at $279,000 base salary plus bonuses and benefits.
Are you freak'n serious that you think no one else is qualified and would actually take this job?
Given your opinion we might as well put a fork in the District and call it dead. Great way to demand accountability here.
Keeping Ghandi in his position is a irrational decision. If he actually came to the Council hearing and said... listen, here were the controls we had in place to validate our records, here are the audits that we performed, yadda yadda yadda... but these people figured a way around those controls that we had in place (basic by the way as far as accounting goes). Then we might cut him more slack. However, the facts are... he did not institute basic best practices in accounting and finance over 10 years in this office. He ignored findings from the DC Audit office. His office has been given 13 warnings... only DC Dept of Health at 16 had more. get a clue yet? This guy does not deserve anymore chances. He had them all, he chose to ignore them otherwise he would say I did x,y & z to prevent this in my own shop. He has no excuse except his own incompetence... which is truly sad as this is suppose to be his field of expertise as he has a Doctorate from LSU.