The private auditing firm that gave the D.C. finance office a sparkling review in January has been granted thousands of extra dollars — over the objections of a top finance official in the city’s stricken public schools, a top school source said.
BDO Seidman LLC was paid to complete the city’s comprehensive audit. It has since billed the city’s schools for $180,000 in extra work, but schools comptroller Abinet Belachew refused to release the money, the source said.
The source spoke on condition of anonymity because of a fear of retribution by supervisors. The source said Belachew refused to approve the payments because there weren’t sufficient documents to prove that BDO had done the extra work.
Records provided by the city finance office show that BDO has received more than $5.2 million since 2005. Finance office spokeswoman Maryann Young said that “none of these payments have been made outside of the firm’s existing or completed contracts.”
She refused to comment further.
Belachew has previously criticized BDO Seidman. Earlier this year, he and schools Chief Financial Officer Pamela Graham refused to sign off on BDO’s audit of the schools. Belachew and Graham said that BDO’s audit blamed all of the schools’ problems on its managers and gave the city finance office a free pass.
Graham and Belachew are employees of the finance office. Under D.C.’s unusual system, the finance office controls the purse strings for all city agencies. The arrangement has caused conflicts in most city agencies — but especially in the schools.
City Chief Finance Officer Natwar Gandhi has consistently blamed the schools for the rampant waste and corruption in the system, but a growing chorus of critics say that Gandhi himself should share the blame.
“The [finance] office has been in charge for 11 years,” said Mary Levy, a school monitor for the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. “Surely, they bear some responsibility for what’s going on over there.”
Young declined comment.
Levy said Mayor Adrian Fenty’s aides recently told her that Gandhi’s staff haven’t answered basic questions about the school’s $1.3 billion budget.
“How could they not be able to get fiscal data?” Levy said. “I’m just kind of puzzled as to whether we have people who don’t understand how these systems operate, or whether we’ve got people just passing a hot potato around.”
