The same day the District of Columbia government’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Natwar Gandhi accepted Governing magazine’s award as one of its public officials of the year, federal agents arrested the head of the city’s tax office. Harriette Walters is charged with embezzling $20 million in a phony tax refund scam she allegedly ran for years — right under the nose of the official known by many in D.C. government as “Dr. No.”
Gandhi’s many admirers are now circling the wagons, but they’ll have a tough time defending his pattern of ignoring warnings from the feds, the news media and even his own staff. For example, two of his top lieutenants refused to sign off on a March audit that gave the city an “A,” even though federal investigators had previously found $217 million of questionable vouchers and no-bid contracts that violated basic government procurement standards.
Then, after The Examiner’s Bill Myers first reported former charter schools chief Brenda Belton’s phony invoice scheme, Gandhi overruled his own controller, who vainly tried to stop payments to suspicious contractors months after Belton was fingered by a whistle-blower. And it was alert employees at a SunTrust branch in Bowie, not Gandhi’s office, who pointed the feds in Walters’ direction.
Gandhi has taken full responsibility for what he admits is a “major management failure.” That’s an understatement. Financial controls that should be built into any well-run municipality are simply missing in D.C., where Gandhi has been CFO for the past 10 years. The lame excuse that he lacks authority to root out fraud and corruption doesn’t cut it. It’s true that a CFO can’t decide how to spend public funds, but he’s not being paid $180K a year to rubber-stamp every invoicethat lands in his in-box. Note, too, that the city’s budget is still not automated, which was a big reason why Walters got away for so long with grabbing one in every seven tax refund checks and using them to buy a Bentley and enjoy shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus.
As disturbing as all this is, let’s not forget that Gandhi has yet to explain the multimillion-dollar procurement irregularities reported by the Government Accountability Office earlier this year. The evidence turned up by the congressional watchdog agency points to corruption that could dwarf this latest scandal in D.C. government. It’s past time to freeze the books and call in the feds.
