Checks and Imbalances in D.C. Finances

Is there something in the water in the D.C. chief financial officer's office that makes some employees fool around with what's not theirs?

New evidence indicates that financial shenanigans within CFO Natwar Gandhi's domain have not come to an end.

This latest episode is not on the scale of the phony-tax-refund scheme allegedly masterminded by former tax office manager Harriette Walters. That bit of embezzlement is said to have cost the city as much as $50 million.

Nor will this case reach the level of the $180,000 netted in a tax office scam allegedly launched by an employee, Jacqueline C. Wright, and her boyfriend, Michael Clark. Authorities say that Wright manipulated the agency's computer system to produce phony refunds that were directed to Clark.

Greed knows no bounds. Wright and Clark reportedly continued their scam even after news of Harriette Walters's arrest broke and the tax office was being flooded with law enforcement officials and media attention.

Could it be the water?

Or, perhaps, the possibility that the CFO's management system is so lax that it draws the ethically challenged the way a magnet draws metal?

What else to think after reading the 24-page May 28 report of D.C. auditor Deborah K. Nichols on the Cash Advance Fund administered by Gandhi's finance and treasury office?

The Cash Advance Fund is a $150,000 revolving city fund from which a payment of up to $250 can be made to employees to correct a government error or to cover lost or stolen paychecks.

Nichols's examination, which included an unannounced cash count, covered the period from Oct. 1, 2004, through Jan. 15 this year.

The D.C. auditor is too much of a professional to put it this way, but her report leads to no other conclusion than that officials running the cash advance operations treated the fund as if it were their personal piggy bank.

The auditor found that: