Once Again, Gandhi Seeks to Repair an Office's Damaged Reputation

Though Gandhi's tax office has suffered from high turnover among its directors, the finance chief points to his successes, saying he brought in top managers from the IRS and the private sector to improve efficiency. Remarkably, within a couple of years, city residents were getting their refunds faster from the District than from the feds.

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Sadly, some of those refunds, we're now learning, were going to phony companies, too.

"It defies the imagination," Gandhi says, as he watches the reputation he rebuilt collapse into a fresh source of sneers and jokes. "Compared to what I faced in 1997, in terms of fixing systems, this is nothing. But the cultural question is something else entirely. How people can receive gifts of such magnitude and say nothing, I just do not understand."

An immigrant who works mind-boggling hours and still finds time to write a book of poetry called "America America," singing the praises of his adopted country, Gandhi cannot fathom why anyone would want to rip off their fellow citizens, especially in a struggling city such as Washington.

A substantial portion of the workers in the Tax and Revenue office are holdovers from the Barry era, Gandhi says, and to be sure, some do their jobs well. But "it is not easy to hire for D.C. government," he says. "And how many people can you fire? The job now is to find out who knew, fix the problem, improve the oversight and restore public confidence. In a few months, I will have hundreds of thousands of tax returns at my doorstep.

"If mayor and council lose confidence in me, I'm gone. But I'm not a quitter. I worked for years to build the reputation of this office, and now I have to do it again."

E-mail:marcfisher@washpost.com