The District of Columbia’s schools finance office, charged with monitoring the $1 billion school budget, will have to pay an outside consulting firm to finish off its own accounting paperwork.
The fiscal year officially ends Sunday, and staff members at the finance office have been working all hours to account for every penny of the schools’ massive budget. But their efforts have been crippled by a mass defection of staff — more than two dozen employees have left the office in the last six months.
The schools finance officers are paid out of the schools’ budget but are hired, fired and supervised by city Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi, D.C. government’s highest-paid official.
The schools have been routinely blasted in outside audits for mismanaging their budget. Gandhi has consistently blamed the rampant waste, fraud and abuse on other officials, but a growing chorus of critics say Gandhi himself must accept responsibility.
“It’s an indication, unfortunately, of just too much disarray,” said Mary Levy, a schools expert for the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. “When are we going to find out where the money went?”
Finance office spokeswoman Maryann Young said her agency hasn’t settled on a contractor or price and tried to downplay the significance of the SOS. “This is not anything out of the ordinary,” she said in an e-mail to The Examiner.
Neither Montgomery County nor Fairfax County school systems — with nearly twice the budgets of D.C. — use outside consultants to finish off budget paperwork, representatives there said.
“We have an expert budget staff,” Montgomery County’s Brian Edwards said.
The accounting firm Alvarez & Marsal, which gave the schools their first-ever top-to-bottom financial review, has told Mayor Adrian Fenty that Gandhi ought to be stripped of hisauthority over the schools’ budget. The recommendation has already drawn public support from District Council Member Tommy Wells, D-Ward 6, a former Board of Education member who accused Gandhi of running “a fiefdom.”
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