Norfolk to look into vacation usage by top officials

NORFOLK

The city auditor plans to launch an investigation into whether high-level officials in key posts are abusing vacation and sick leave policies.

John Sanderlin Jr., Norfolk’s auditor, became suspicious after he discovered discrepancies in the way one senior official – Norman L. Maas, the city’s library director – accounted for vacation time. Maas took weeks of leave and was paid for working.

Maas, who received a written reprimand, said his secretary turned in the vacation time but that paperwork did not get recorded correctly.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

The inquiry also led the auditor to review City Manager Regina V.K. Williams’ vacation time. In nine years in the post, Williams has gone on overseas trips and Christmas cruises with her family but has documented taking only a handful of vacation days.

She has accrued about 100 days of vacation time, or more than $70,000 she could cash in if she leaves her post, according to several sources close to the probe who asked not to be identified.

Sanderlin refused to answer most questions about the investigation, the audit or his findings. However, Mayor Paul Fraim said the auditor informed him recently of his belief that Williams has not properly accounted for all the time she has taken off.

Williams and City Attorney Bernard A. Pishko are allowed to accrue unlimited leave, a policy adopted by the City Council in 2004.

Suffolk is the only other South Hampton Roads city that allows its city manager to accrue unlimited time.

The usually soft-spoken Williams, who rarely loses her temper, was angry at the suggestion that the city is not getting its money’s worth from her. She said no one, including Sanderlin, has informed her of concerns about her time.

“Anybody who has watched me knows that I give more than 100 percent to this city,” Williams said.

“I have been maligned for two years now,” she said, referring to complaints from council members about delays in filling key positions, critical audits from state agencies and other controversies.

“This is an insult to my integrity and all that I have done for this city.”

Fraim said the way Williams has accounted for her time off “is acceptable to me. She’s basically on call 24 hours per day, seven days a week.

“It’s not unusual for me to receive communications from her at 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning,” he said.

“I doubt that she accounts for that sort of time.”

However, he said, he will ask the council to consider placing new restrictions on Williams’ and Pishko’s vacation time.

Sanderlin said he plans to review the vacation time of all senior administrators and eventually all city employees.

Hired by the council as auditor in 2001, Sanderlin operates independently of the city manager, who oversees most aspects of Norfolk government.

He routinely pores over the books of various departments, looking for waste or practices that run contrary to city guidelines. He is a stickler for rules, and most of his audits are critical.

He and Williams have been at odds at times. An audit released in early 2007 on the parks and recreation department found that after three years without a permanent director, the division was plagued with sloppiness and ill-equipped to provide quality service to residents. Williams took issue with some of its findings.

Fraim said “there is an inherent conflict between the city auditor and the manager, which is in some ways healthy.” He praised Sanderlin for “helping to make our city government more efficient.”

Vice Mayor Anthony L. Burfoot and Councilman Don Williams declined to comment about Sanderlin’s recent inquiry.

Councilman W. Randy Wright said, “This is an issue for the council to discuss.”

Maas said a library employee gave copies of his personal calendar to Sanderlin.

“If I was trying to steal from the city, I wouldn’t have put it on my calendar,” he said.

Maas said he can’t take paid vacation until he has accrued all the time he took in violation of city rules.

Regina V.K. Williams said Sanderlin informed her about his concerns with Maas but never mentioned that he shared similar concerns about her. If asked, Williams said, she can account for her time.

She said she never planned to take any accrued time in cash when she retires.

“I plan to use the time off,” she said, when “things settle down.”

In addition to holiday and other trips, Williams said she was on a part-time leave of absence for three months to spend time in a Baltimore hospital with her husband, who died in January.

She said she has more than made up for the time off by working many 60-and 70-hour weeks.

While in Baltimore, she set up a makeshift office in an extended-stay hotel and said she often worked long days.

On average, she said she works more than 40 hours a week, 52 weeks per year, and exchanges phone calls and e-mails with city officials while at home and on vacation.

Williams is a salaried employee and makes $206,063 a year.

Williams said she asked Pishko to draw up the ordinance that allowed the two of them to accrue unlimited time after a number of projects, including efforts to bring Major League Baseball to Norfolk, forced her to forfeit leave time.

“We were both bemoaning the loss of leave time,” she said. “I told him that where I was before, there was no cap for council appointees.”

The council approved the change by a 7-0 vote June 2, 2004. Since July 1, 2004, both have been able to accrue the time.

Fraim, who initially said he did not recall the vote, said he plans to ask the council to reconsider the ordinance this spring.

He said he now favors restricting vacation accrual for Williams and Pishko. The restrictions should be more generous than the guidelines for other employees, he said.

Staff writers Meghan Hoyer, Dave Forster, Deirdre Fernandes and Mike Saewitz contributed to this story.

Harry Minium, (757) 446-2371, harry.minium@pilotonline.com