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?