Mayor Manages McHard Meetings

The gears of government are turning at City Hall.

In an email to senior staff at several city departments this morning, Mayor Alan Webber let them know he'll begin meetings next Tuesday to discuss responses to the McHard fraud prevention assessment.

SFR's cover story this week examined the city's delay in letting the public know how it planned to respond to the report. It's been seven months since the city announced the auditing firm's findings and more than a year since it hired McHard to start digging into its finances, policies and procedures.

"This is more of an ongoing response instead of a document," Webber told SFR in a phone call Friday. He said he'll start the series of working meetings with the Finance Department. The mayor also plans to meet with heads of the city's Information Technology, Human Resources, Public Utilities, Parking and Parks and Recreation Departments. All were mentioned in the 37-page report.

Also mentioned in the report were failings by the city's internal auditor. Friday afternoon, the city revealed Liza Kerr had resigned her position early last month. The position is not posted on the city's hiring web page. There's currently discussion at City Hall about whether to hire an outside firm to handle the task.

"At each meeting a different department head or group of senior managers will get together to go over the progress we've made—and improvements we still need to make—in response to the McHard findings," Webber wrote in his email Friday morning.

The mayor told senior staff he would summarize takeaways from each meeting in a progress report which he planned to make public.

"I want everyone in Santa Fe to know exactly where we stand in addressing the issues McHard identified," he said in the email.

That would be a marked departure for the city, which has kept specific responses to the fraud assessment close to the vest.

While reporting its cover story, SFR asked the city about responses to the report by department heads. The mayor, former city manager and deputy city manager all referred in interviews to an effort by the city to compile a more formal response than what had been made public so far.

A city spokesman, though, said last week he wasn't aware that any written responses had been collected. After hearing from two city employees that the city manager had, in fact, requested that department heads write answers to McHard, SFR filed a formal request on Monday. A records custodian said Tuesday the city needed until the middle of May to reply.

In Webber's email Friday, however, he wrote, "There is a report, compiled by the previous administration and senior management, that spans more than 50 pages." He attached the report to the email. A city spokesman provided it Friday afternoon.

The slickly produced 51-page response is dated April 30, 2018, the day of SFR's records request. It details city efforts to address 66 issues raised by the McHard report. Authored by the city manager, attorney and finance director (all of whom have left their positions), the response says "the city has implemented a rigorous and ongoing reform process" and that staff have been working at it since the report was released in late September of last year.

"This document is not intended as a final report—merely an update on how the city is going about remaking itself in the wake not only of this report but of the clear desire for change at City Hall both from the public and from a city workforce eager to work in a more efficient, modern, and effective manner," the response says.

Rather than use the response as a checklist, Webber says he'll use it as a guide for the weekly meetings.

"It's fine. There's nothing wrong with it," Webber told SFR of the report. "It's just not how I want to work. … [Responding to McHard] is not something you do once and it's done."