Public hearing gives Hoover residents chance to weigh in on delayed solution to Frank Brocato failures
Hoover’s new CFO, Jennifer Cornett, has had a wild ride since beginning earlier this year. She came out of the gate strong, insisting she would clean things up and make city finances more transparent. Unfortunately, she had to get through a mess she inherited before she got to that. It is a mess that city leadership, Mayor Frank Brocato and Council Council President John Lyda created or allowed to continue and have since tried to pin on staff hand-picked, hired, and often promoted by Brocato. According to the city, upon starting her job, Cornett discovered so many different problems that she sent out an SOS. In keeping with their longstanding practice of making things as convoluted and costly as possible, the mayor and city attorney decided to do a top-secret forensic audit, which was utterly laughably billed as being done with attorney-client privilege. Last Thursday, Cornett gave a presentation pitching Mayor Frank Brocato’s proposed budget and thanking the budget team that worked with her. She specifically thanked Claire Hamilton and Mindy White. Cornett noted that a “heavy, heavy burden has been placed on both those individuals, and they have done a great job.” Then, she moved on to outline a budget she described as conservative and common sense. One of the highlights was when Cornett addressed the mayor’s request for additional staffing, during which she said, “I was happy the finance positions made the cut.” Rather than being excited, though we understand why Cornett is, we need to ask why it took this long for those jobs to be requested Brocato knew for years the problem existed. As reported in documents released in the appendix of the Kroll report , problems related to finance department staffing shortages were known to the mayor and council leadership for years. For example, Kroll reported, “12 people (including Bolt ) left the Finance Department in the four fiscal years from October 1, 2019 through September 30, 2023. Given that the average size of the Department is 15 people, that represents an 80% turnover in personnel; a very high turnover rate for any organization even though some of these 12 were short-time hires. Hiring and promoting personnel with the needed skill sets and experience is a challenge that many organizations are confronted with, but it seems to have been particularly challenging for the Finance Department. This is reflected in the issues Hoover and BMSS had in finalizing the FY 2022 financial statements, and based on our interviews and analyses these problems are continuing at Hoover.” Investigators interviewed Allan Rice, who, according to the report, “mentioned that a study was conducted by Gallagher & Consultants in 2017 that determined that the Finance Department was understaffed by six or seven positions.” At Monday’s council meeting during public comment sections and for Friday’s public budget hearing, will anyone ask why it took so long for the mayor’s budget to fill these holes and why the council leader do their part to insist he did? Read the prior proposed budgets here: The Fiscal Year 2022 Proposed Budget was presented on September 7, 2021. The Fiscal Year 2023 Mayor’s proposed budget was presented on September 6, 2022. The Fiscal Year 2024 Mayor’s proposed budget was presented on September 5, 2023.
