A pause on purchasing: Richmond halts use of employee p-cards in effort to improve transparency and accountability
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RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) -- The City of Richmond is scaling back employees' abilities to spend city money. Mayor Danny Avula announced new restrictions to the city's purchasing-card system for the next few months while leaders re-evaluate employee spending altogether.
Procurement cards are a way for city employees to make quick work-related purchases, but Richmond's system is no stranger to controversy, so cries for greater transparency within the system are nothing new.
Last year, an Inspector General investigation found that nearly $500,000 in Richmond tax dollars were wasted or misused -- essentially because of p-cards. This ultimately led to the high-profile resignation of then-General Registrar Keith Balmer. However, it also resulted in heightened skepticism and questions about city employees' access to taxpayer money.
During the newly announced 60-90 day pause, Richmond leaders will "reassess, retool, and reboot" the program. The only permitted p-card purchases will be those necessary for public health, safety and critical services -- in addition to those where no other payment option exists. This means no travel-related, Amazon or food purchases.
It's a complicated topic that transcends city bounds, so 8News wanted to learn more about financial and procurement departments across our region.
"We're increasingly a digital society and government is just part of that transformation," Henrico County's Department of Finance Director Sheila Minor told our team.
Neighboring Henrico County also uses a p-card system. Minor explained that it's all about checks and balances -- and taking advantage of modern technology.
"We have single limit transaction thresholds on pay cards," Minor said. "So they can't be used for a transaction over the amount assigned to said employee. Likewise, they have transaction limits for the statement period, so those cards can't be used multiple times and exceed a specific threshold."
Hanover County added that their p-cards also have credit limits and cardholders must provide receipts and have a supervisor sign-off on each and every purchase.
Richmond is temporarily downsizing from 320 issued p-cards to 60. For context, Henrico County currently has 338 p-cards deployed and Hanover County has around 502 between the county, schools, libraries and jail.
"We try to make sure we're efficient in our operations, but we have to balance that with checks and balances and controls," Minor said.
Again, applying these processes differs throughout Central Virginia, so what works in Hanover and Henrico, for example, is likely different from Richmond's operations, which is why the city is working with a national organization to help them develop their next step approach to procurement.
In the meantime, 80% of Richmond's procurement cards will be paused for the next 60-90 days as the city evaluates different methods to better monitor card use.
The city listed out a series of tasks they are working toward:
- Revising p-card policies and procedures based on the recommendations of the NIGP assessment
- Training staff on revised policies and procedures
- Implementing a third-party, AI-supported auditing tool
- Investigating additional revenue opportunities through the p-card program's rebate structure
- Evaluating alternate p-card providers, and, if there are significant benefits, switching card providers
- Updating related City policies like the ones regarding travel, discretionary spend, etc.
