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In baseball, the fourth batter in the lineup is also known as the “cleanup” hitter. Their job is to hit for power and score runs by driving in other batters who have gotten on base. It's generally considered the most important spot in the lineup, and at City Hall it is more important than ever because the “cesspool of corruption and inefficiency” that Mayor Wilder warned us about in 2004 (and made great strides in draining) has sadly made its pungent return. One could consider that Mayor Avula is now the “Cleanup Mayor” because he is the 4th mayor since we switched to the strong mayor form of government in 2004 — and he has one helluva mess to clean up, especially after the last eight years.
The cesspool has sadly come back in full force and the scandals we are discovering now make one of the previous whopper corruption scandals look like a picnic. Back in 2002, the city’s then-Assistant City Manager was busted for a mail scheme in which he sent more than $500,000 of city money to firms he created for work that was never done and finally discovered by someone who spotted phony invoices for bad spelling and signatures of people no longer with the city. That scandal was outdone recently (under Stoney’s nose) by a former city employee who set up three home based businesses and received $2 million on city credit cards and purchase orders between between 2021 and December 2024, according to the Times-Dispatch. Unlike those scandals, however, the credit card audit shows this debacle was self-inflicted and came from inside the house due to a lack of oversight and use of best practices.
The latest story from the cesspool was revealed in a report from the City Auditor that found the city’s credit card program (aka p-card) spent $20 million from more than 43,000 charges between July 2022 and May 2024. $5 million of it was spent on “questionable expenditures” and/or cardholders routinely failed to document the veracity of expenses and those that exceeded spending limits. Purchases were made on things every taxpayer excepts a city to purchase, like a $20,000 lunch, a $2,300 plane ticket that should have been but never was reimbursed, and even the purchase of a $480 suit for an employee to wear to court hearings.
It shouldn’t (and won’t) come as a surprise that — just like the water plant that melted down and most everything else in the Stoney administration — there were no guardrails or controls, inadequate training, and inconsistent enforcement of policies for the credit card program that was launched in 2018 and run through the Department of Procurement Services (DPS).
The city issued almost 350 credit cards but there were no clear policies and procedures in place to regulate spending. Policies that did happen to exist were not consistently enforced. Many card with high credit limits were given out to some employees who didn’t qualify to have one or need one. When credit card statements came in, transactions were too often not properly reviewed for their need or if unauthorized purchase had been made. For example, over $2 million in transactions were not reviewed or approved by departments.
The audit was charitable with its language: “The city’s p-card program and usage lacked effective internal controls to ensure the proper use of public funds. The city’s transaction
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