(The Center Square) — All but one of 26 allegations of fraud, waste and abuse against Richmond’s two highest-ranking election officials were substantiated in a report by the city’s inspector general.
The only investigated allegation directly related to elections involved General Registrar Keith Balmer hiring a private security company “to investigate possible election interference.”
The report revealed some allegations of inappropriate responses to workplace violence and sexual harassment. The majority of the allegations, however, focused on the officials racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in unapproved charges on the taxpayer dime, according to the report.
Perhaps the most troubling abuse of authority disclosed in the report occurred in the summer of 2023 when General Registrar Keith Balmer allegedly declined to report domestic violence that occurred between city employees in the workplace.
A group of employees attended a work conference in Roanoke and stayed overnight in a hotel. Two employees – one a city employee and the other, a temp worker – got a room together as they were dating. The temp worker was “arrested for domestic assault on their partner,” according to the report.
Balmer allegedly acted independently of the employee relations manager, who had offered to help, and told the assaulted employee they (the report often refers to individuals in neutral plural terms to maintain privacy) could stay at his house on the condition the employee would break off the relationship with the offender.
When the employee rejected Balmer’s offer, he advised the employee to resign due to “safety concerns for other employees,” according to the report. The assaulted employee was told the office could “help them get unemployment benefits” but couldn’t obtain them because of the resignation.
Deputy General Registrar Jerry Richardson also allegedly neglected to report – or potentially covered up – complaints of workplace violence and sexual harassment to human resources, as city regulations required her to do, according to the IG.
Two Office of Elections employees reportedly complained to Richardson of instances of workplace violence and sexual harassment. Richardson allegedly told them that she was the liaison to human resources and that such complaints needed to go through her. The office’s human resource business partner later told the investigator the deputy general registrar is not the liaison to human resources; the report states that Richardson never passed the complaints along.
Unlike in the instances of alleged unreported violence and harassment, city employees were occasionally the beneficiaries of Balmer’s and Richardson’s misconduct, according to the report.
The report details Richardson allegedly using her government purchasing card to make college tuition payments for two employees in 2021. One employee reportedly “left the city within three months” of payment; of the three payments Richardson made on the employee’s behalf, “only two payments were credited back to the city.”
The city allows employee tuition assistance when employees pursue coursework that would “benefit [them] professionally,” but only when they can demonstrate financial hardship and the assistance is approved by the HR director or designee.
“There was no claim of hardship for the employees, and no requests were submitted to human resources for approval,” according to the report.
Though Richardson went against city policy, the tuition payments ($7,233 in unreimbursed funds) are a relatively inexpensive example of substantiated allegations of waste and abuse against Balmer and Richardson, according to the investigator.
Balmer spent over $260,000 on office redesign and remodeling, including $14,647 on new furniture and $16,293 on art installations. The nearly $230,000 remodel of the leased space was split into 21 purchase orders to circumvent the bidding process required by the Department of Procurement Services for purchases of $50,000 to $200,000, according to the report.
Balmer and Richardson also allegedly spent over $235,000 contracting with a private security firm for personal protection services for Balmer and several other services due to alleged threats the inspector general found to be “non-specific to the General Registrar,” and a phone call Richardson referenced that couldn’t be verified.
