City Seeking Improved Ethics Training

In light of the of two City of Alexandria employees for embezzlement, Acting City Manager Bruce Johnson unveiled plans for new ethics training for city employees during Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.

City Attorney Jim Banks said discussions have been made to make the training more pointed and thorough. He said training would include an on-boarding component as well as an ongoing component that employees would have to take annually or semi-annually.

Councilman Frank Fannon sent a memo to other members of City Council and city staff on Sept. 1 urging more frequent compliance testing and ethics training.

“I also strongly encourage that we put a citywide training and testing system in place to help reduce incidents of employee misconduct,” Fannon wrote in the memo. “Every time an incident is reported, it makes all of us appear as though we are not doing our best to protect the citizens’ investments that they have in our city government.”

Fannon also suggested the possible creation of a fraud and abuse hotline to protect whistleblowers. 

“We’ve had a number of instances, but we caught them,” Donley said after Fannon mentioned as many as six fraud and abuse incidents in the last two years. “Training needs to be part of the value and culture of the organization. We’re a half-billion dollar organization and we need to have that core service to uphold that organization.”

Johnson also mentioned conducting a review of the city’s audit office in light of the recent incidents.