There’s a big story about Lowell in the Los Angeles Times this week. “In storied New England mill city, Cambodian Americans make political history” was precipitated by Sokhary Chau’s election as Mayor of Lowell earlier this year, making him the first Cambodian American mayor in the United States. The story reviews how Cambodian American residents of Lowell with allies from outside the city’s historic power structure came together to mount a legal challenge to the all-at-large method of electing city councilors that had been in place since 1959 and how the settlement of that legal challenge led to the election of a more diverse and representative city council.
Why is the L.A. Times interested in the Cambodian community of Lowell? Well Long Beach, California, is just 25 miles south of L.A. and has the largest population of Cambodian Americans in the United States. Yet Long Beach only elected its first Cambodian American city councilor in 2020. In contrast, Lowell, which has the second largest population of Cambodian Americans in the U.S., elected its first Cambodian city councilor in 1999 (Rithy Uong) and now has three Cambodian Americans on the city council (Mayor Chau and Councilors Vesna Nuon and Paul Ratha Yem) and three on the school committee (Mayor Chau and members Dominik Lay and Susie Chhoun).
The story, written by the paper’s Washington-based reporter Don Lee, also covers the early arrival of Cambodians in Lowell and puts that in the larger context of the city as a destination for immigrants from many places.
Here’s an excerpt from the story:
At a time when Asian Americans are facing hostility in many parts of the country, Lowell’s Cambodian community is up and coming — thanks in large part to its perseverance, help from public interest attorneys from Boston and painstaking alliance-building with Lowell residents and other disenfranchised groups, who now are also benefiting from the city’s dramatic changes.
They pushed for and won a new system of electing most officials by district, replacing the at-large process that had kept Lowell’s white community in control, even as the white population declined and last year dipped below 50%.
It’s a quintessential American story, touching on the struggle of immigrants, overcoming racial divisions and even the decline of U.S. manufacturing. Cambodians across the country have taken notice.
The full story can be found on the L.A. Times website.
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At last Tuesday’s meeting, the city council received its annual Independent Auditor’s report (which is available online). As someone who has worked in government for nearly 30 years, I’ll be the first to admit that some of rules of the bureaucracy don’t make sense and tend to make it more difficult for government to do its job. However, the rules around the expenditure of money do make sense from a “protect the taxpayer” perspective and even though they make the job seem more difficult, it’s critical that the procedures be followed. According to the Independent Auditor, that’s not always the case in Lowell.
Here's a simple example of how the government purchasing system is supposed to work: Let’s say you work in a government office and you want to buy a new printer for your computer. Here are the steps you follow:
Obtain a quote for the printer from the vendor
Obtain a purchase order from the people in your organization who oversee the budget. The purpose of this step is to ensure that (1) there is money in your budget to cover the cost of the printer and (2) that money is not already obligated to pay for something else.
Order the printer
Take delivery of the printer and send the invoice that came with it to your budget office along with the purchase order so that the invoice can be paid.
The Independent Auditor’s Report cites as an ongoing problem the practice in Lowell of creating purchase orders after the invoice had been received. In other words, ordering and taking delivery of the item and then getting the purchase order. Here’s what the auditor wrote about that:
We noted that there are still purchase orders with dates subsequent to the invoice date. We continue to recommend that a policy regarding the approval of purchase orders prior to the purchase of goods or services by any Department be implemented. A situation could arise where goods or services have been ordered and no budget is available to support the purchase.
Then there’s an item with the heading “Checks Written to and from the City.” In 2022, it’s really hard to believe that the city transfers money from one city account to another by the city writing a check to itself but that seems to be the case. Here’s what the Independent Auditor wrote about that:
The City currently issues actual checks to the “City of Lowell” as part of the weekly payroll warrant. These checks are issued when the payroll warrants are run and include GIC withholdings, dental withholdings, life insurance withholdings, and other fringe benefits such as Medicare and workers compensation. The Human Resource Department then brings the checks to the Treasurer’s Office to be deposited back into the City’s bank account. The process should be completed via standard payroll entries within the general ledger software, MUNIS, instead of issuing checks. The need to issue checks instead of completing journals within the ledger indicates there is an underlying set up issue within the payroll process.
The process of issuing checks to the City as part of the payroll or vendor warrant process increases the risk of the City funds being misappropriated, causes additional reconciliation work for the Treasurer’s and Auditor’s Offices, and creates year end cut off issues, if deposits are not made timely. At June 30, 2020, there were checks totaling $288,334 made payable to the City that had not been deposited in the bank and therefore caused a timing issue between the Treasurers cash and the cash balance recorded in the general ledger.
During our review of the checks written to and from the City, we noted other checks written for: parking, water utility, police details and some checks written to the Lowell Public Schools. Eliminating the process of writing checks to ourselves will reduce risks associated with the warrant process.
The “the city writing checks to itself” comment leads to another criticism by the Independent Auditor, this one recommends the restructuring of the payroll process. Again, here is what the auditors write:
Currently, the City is communicating all payroll changes via carbon forms which require a departmental employee to hand write a form, and the data entry to facilitate the change occurs at the City Auditors office. Due to the large number of employees working within the City, this is a very time-consuming process. Further, turnover within key payroll positions can lead to significant issues as historical knowledge is not being documented within the general ledger.
The current process in place has led to the following issues:
Direct deposit registers being sent to the bank late.
Terminated employees continuing to be paid.
Teacher summer payroll options, i.e., balloon payment at the end of the school year for all summer payroll, or payments weekly over the summer, are not being properly monitored, resulting in overpayments.
Councilor Erik Gitschier dug into this issue when questioning the City Auditor Kelly Oakes and Chief Financial Officer Conor Baldwin. It sounds as if the school department, which has the most employees of any department in the city, continues to use a paper-based payroll system. Both Oakes and Baldwin explained that for more than ten years, the fiscal side of city government has tried to get the school department to adopt the automated payroll system already used by the rest of city government but that the school department has not done so. Because the school department has substantial independence from the rest of city government, there is no way for the Auditor or CFO to force a resolution of this. Yet the Auditor and CFO are left running an obsolete system that sucks up an enormous amount of resources at City Hall, resources that are undoubtedly needed for other tasks that are now being neglected.
Besides the inefficiency, this setup creates an environment susceptible to waste and fraud. Again, from the Independent Auditor:
The lack of strong internal controls surrounding the payroll process leads to a situation in which errors or irregularities can occur such as, the possibility of fictitious employees being created and paid, and as mentioned at times terminated/retired employees are continuing to receive pay checks, or teachers whom received a balloon payment continue to receive weekly payroll checks and once discovered resources must be allocated to track down and try to obtain reimbursement for the overpayments.
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Speaking of public schools, there’s been much written recently about the likelihood of a state takeover of the Boston Public Schools. Lowell is not yet in that predicament, however, several Lowell schools are being closely monitored by the state, a status triggered by low test scores and other data like attendance and suspensions.
Former Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville wrote an Op-Ed in the Boston Globe this week in which he advised against a wholesale takeover of the Boston schools by the state. Reville argues that although the initial state takeover of the Lawrence schools ten years ago yielded some initial improvement, “there is no evidence of states taking over districts of even modest size and producing positive academic results.”
Reville’s advice for improving Boston is to stop looking for a magical fix. Instead, key constituencies must agree on a practical set of change strategies while leaders at all levels exercise the political will necessary to overcome substantial resistance to change.
While Reville’s advice is easier said than done, it is the only approach that can bring meaningful improvement. As he wrote, too many hold “grossly inflated expectations for miracle workers.”
But Reville’s approach is also applicable across government whether it’s implementing an automated payroll system or building a multimillion-dollar high school on time and on budget. Only by adopting a rational plan, getting key people to by into it, and ensuring that those people have the self-discipline to see the plan through to completion in the face of withering criticism and normal bureaucratic inertia can success be achieved.
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I just finished reading Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank by Eric Orner. It’s a graphic novel about former Congressman Barney Frank. It’s a combination political history/biography written in comic book form (hence, the “graphic novel” label).
I enjoyed the book for several reasons. First, it’s an accurate and amusing depiction of Boston and then Washington politics. Frank’s first job in politics was as chief of staff to newly elected Boston Mayor Kevin White, then he navigated the Massachusetts State House before going to Congress. Orner, who is a former aide to Frank and an award-winning comic strip writer, captures the idiosyncrasies and hilarious details of those environments in a way that will be very satisfying to political junkies. In that way, it’s sort of a sequel to The Last Hurrah.
I also felt educated by the book about the experience of being gay in politics at a time when those two things were mutually exclusive (being openly gay, that is). Orner shows how from adolescence until he ultimately came out while a member of Congress, Frank suppressed his desire for love, comfort, and companionship because to express those things openly would have been fatal to his passion for politics and then shows how much life improved for Frank after he came out.
At a time when so many in American politics seemed driven to unwind decades of progress in LGBTQ rights, it’s good to be reminded of why fighting to preserve those advances is so important. Smahtguy provides just such a reminder.
The way the city handles purchasing has always been a nightmare for the cultural council. In an ideal world the cultural council would request purchase orders for all grants written at the time they are awarded. Unfortunately there are two problems . . . one being that the cultural council operates on a January 1 to December 31 fiscal year due to Mass Cultural Council rules while the city runs on a July 1 to June 30 fiscal year. Any cultural council written PO's that are not paid out by the end of the city fiscal year are cancelled and have to be rewritten, this puts an extra burden on the admin and on the department processing purchase orders. The other is that cultural council grants are reimbursement grants, yet all monies received from the city are considered taxable income by the IRS, in order to ease the tax burden on individual artists MCC recommends third party payment to vendors used by a grantee . . . which means multiple purchase orders might have to be written on a single grant and the amounts might not be known until the third party vendor invoice is received, creating the kind of situation noted by the auditors.
Thanks for highlighting this article and giving it some context. As I read it the first time and again in today's Sun Long Beach came to mind.
Let's hope the audit spurs some long over due changes to how the City manages the books. A great first step and money saver would be to go to a bi-weekly payroll system and require direct deposit. It is a long time standard for most municipalities as well as the Commonwealth. Certainly it will require some impact bargaining and we have the right folks to bring to the table between the Council and the Manager.
So much of the manner in which the COL does business makes even the easy things hard for staff and residents. Change is difficult and often requires some up front investment which will cause some nay sayers to say nay. The current Council can and should make positive change their legacy