Has anyone considered putting the mayor, councilors, and city staff under oath before each Hoover City Council meeting? Having reviewed months of meeting videos and statements related to the forensic audit, the number of inconsistencies seemingly worsens every time it’s discussed.
Residents may get honest answers anyway. Kroll has promised the city council they’ll answer questions, but that will also depend on the city’s gatekeepers. The city solicited questions about the audit via the city clerk’s office, with the window of submissions closing yesterday. Now we wait for a Christmas Miracle: Complete and honest answers.
Kroll Forensic Audit Questions
Please send questions regarding the Kroll Forensic Audit to the Office of the City Clerk at cityclerk@hooveralabama.gov. Questions will be forwarded to Kroll after December 5, 2024, at 5:00 p.m.
Before Thanksgiving, Mayor Frank Brocato addressed the City Council, saying, “I felt compelled to get up tonight as the mayor. I want to reaffirm my commitment to taking responsibility and addressing the challenges that our city faces head-on. We’ve had a number over the last years.”
He said, “It could have been very easy for me to address the challenges in our accounting department internally. I chose not to do that.” While the mayor’s delivery may have been an award-worthy performance, facts dispute much of what he said.
All evidence indicates that the mayor has known about and ignored deficiencies and problems in the accounting department from his earliest years in office, from staffing shortages to the need for software upgrades and many other issues addressed in the Kroll report.
Brocato could have asked the council in any one of his previous budgets to fully fund new positions that would have brought stability to the office, but he didn’t, and the City Council failed to exercise the checks and balances needed to hold him publicly accountable for it.
Worse than twisting the truth to use his failures as a sign of leadership, the mayor’s remarks included a series of statements that appear to contradict earlier public statements made by him, his CFO, and others.
It’s no wonder city leadership has resorted to deleting videos and skimping on the details of meeting minutes in recent years.
In his comments, the mayor stated that his door is open to every resident; the question is, can they trust what he tells them when they enter? Will he continue to deflect responsibility, blaming those who report on the problems and those who care enough to reach out or show up to ask about them?
As mentioned above, the city clerk was accepting questions, but how will those questions be filtered to Kroll if at all. What about questions directed toward the city council, staff, and officials? Will they answer honestly or hide behind attorney/client privilege
Sources tell me that the city clerk is honest, hard-working, and trustworthy but has had her hands tied by superiors, including the mayor and the city attorney.
This is the same city clerk whose meeting minutes for the council barely scratch the surface of what is discussed or said, leaving out nearly all discussions and deliberations between council members and giving no context to what is said during public comment. The same City Clerk who produced a public records request that didn’t include any relevant public records after a three-month wait.
The mayor and city leadership have repeatedly shown through their words and actions that they want concerned residents to sit down, shut up, and be grateful that we’ve had any answers, but here’s to hoping for a Christmas miracle.
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