By Taylor Boyd
Martinsville Interim City Manager Rob Fincher took time following the Feb. 24 City Council meeting to clarify comments he made and address rumors circulating about city finances, lawsuits and document management.
“They’re rumors that keep popping up, and we’ll see them on social media or we’ll hear them in other ways like in person. People will say, ‘Well what about this missing money,’ and I’ll say, ‘What are you talking about,’” he said.
Missing Funds
One persistent rumor involved $5 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds.
“None of that ended up being missing. It was that we had to change the way things were being appropriated for the federal reporting to get it all within the timeline.
ARPA came out with guidelines and had dates and times set,” Fincher said.
He said some reports were incomplete before he took over as interim city manager.
“So the CFO, the Chief Financial Officer, and myself, when I became acting interim, we started making phone calls to state and federal representatives saying, ‘Listen, we’ve run into this. How do we correct this,’” he said.
Fincher said U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, and Eric Phillips, R-Martinsville, helped ensure timelines were met and the funds were reported correctly.
“We didn’t lose any of the money,” he said. “If we hadn’t gotten that changed, then we would have had to pay money back to the federal government, but that was all avoided.”
Fincher emphasized that city finances are closely monitored and that any lump-sum revenues are immediately invested.
“If we were capable of missing $5 million, then that means we would have had a whole lot of extra money laying around that could have gone missing. Most of our stuff is pretty tight — that as the money comes in, it goes out. We don’t have it in a bank account, in other words,” he said.
Lawsuits
Fincher addressed rumors about large lawsuits against the city or payouts to past employees.
“We don’t have anything active like that that we’re facing. Now, could someone down the road do it? Yeah, of course. People attempt to sue us all the time. It happens. But right now, we’re not facing these huge types of things,” he said.
He also noted that past payouts were not substantial and occurred more than two or three years ago.
Missing Documents
Fincher said he also wanted to clarify comments about missing documents.
“I was not (referring to) the” former city manager “or the mayor issue. This is its own separate thing. I didn’t explain it well because a lot of the public didn’t even realize there was this question about missing documents,” he said.
Martinsville contracts with a cybersecurity firm to examine all city documents and ensure compliance with preservation orders “because we’re under what they call a ‘preservation order,’ because of what’s been going on.
“We were under a situation where even if an employee hits delete on their email, it has to be maintained on the server and it’s still there. That was put in place before” the former city manager left, “so we had to make certain that was still intact and nothing was missing since then, since I started eight months ago,” he said.
The cybersecurity firm confirmed no documents were missing during Fincher’s eight-month tenure as interim city manager.
“That’s what I was addressing… just to reiterate, it has nothing to do with the” former city manager issue “or the mayor issue,” he said, adding those are separate issues.
Vice Mayor Kathy Lawson
Fincher also clarified comments regarding Vice Mayor Kathy Lawson.
“I mentioned that I had done an investigation at the request of one of the city council members, specifically the vice-mayor… she said, ‘I’d like the city manager to investigate me and this,’” he said.
The investigation, involving emails and employee interviews, found allegations that Lawson improperly directed city staff were false.
“What the vice-mayor and all members of council do… is they’re kind of a go-between a lot of the times with the public,” Fincher said. Council members now are asked to use the city’s online program to report constituent issues, reducing any perception of direct involvement with city operations.
“That way it doesn’t raise any suspicion in the future of them saying that a city council member was having a direct involvement with the actions of the executive branch,” he said.
