If you were hoping that a City Hall audit of Schools Superintendent Alan Ingram’s controversial employment contract might result in some bucks flowing back into the city coffers, well, today you might feel like the joke’s on you—and all Springfield taxpayers.
Critics have been calling for Ingram to return a $30,000 payment he received under his 2008 contract to buy a house in the city—something he never did. Yesterday, Mayor Domenic Sarno released the results of an audit, conducted by city Auditor Mark Ianello, which found that—and no, this is not a joke—the city appears, in fact, to owe Ingram $13,000, due to yet another School Department “payroll error.”
“I am concerned about another payroll error at the Springfield School Department,” Sarno said in a statement.
You’re not alone there, Mr. Mayor. Earlier this year, it came out that another payroll mess-up had resulted in city school teachers being overpaid a total of $1.2 million over the course of the year. The teachers—some of whom said they’d called the School Department when they noticed their paychecks were fatter than expected but were told not to worry about it—now have to pay back that money.
School Committee member and mayoral candidate Antonette Pepe—who first brought the details of Ingram’s deal to light earlier this summer—called the latest payroll screw-up another example of “ major incompetence” at Sarno’s City Hall. “How they make all these kinds of mistakes is beyond my imagination,” Pepe told the Springfield Republican’s Patrick Johnson.
Pepe recently wrote to state Auditor Suzanne Bump, asking her to look into Ingram’s contract.
According to the mayor’s office, a review will be done of the city’s payroll procedures, to prevent similar errors in the future. In light of the blow-up over Ingram’s deal, city leaders might also start thinking hard about what perks they’re willing to give away in employment contracts, who will be involved in those decisions, and what recourse the city will have if the employee doesn’t live up to the agreement. With Ingram deciding—wisely, it seems—that he will not seek a new contract with the city when his current one expires next year, City Hall has a great opportunity to show whether it can do contracts the right way.
