Special prosecutor report on McDonald/Moss spat

Last October, a spat between Norfolk’s Commissioner of the Revenue, Sharon McDonald, and Treasurer, Tom Moss, resulted in a letter being issued by the Commissioner in which she accused the Treasurer and his deputy, Vice Mayor Anthony Burfoot, of revealing confidential taxpayer information to a reporter in violation of  Virginia Code § 58.1-3. The letter led to the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the matter.

On June 18, the special prosecutor, Martinsville Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert l. Bushnell, issued his final report. The document (below the fold) is an interesting read.

Bushnell describes the two offices:

The City of Norfolk has situated the offices of the Commissioner of Revenue and the Treasurer in the same building side by side, separated by an open common area — architecture reflecting the natural expectation that these offices would conduct their closely related tasks in an open and cooperative fashion. The relationship between Moss and McDonald has, for a variety of reasons, deteriorated to the point that the City has had to build a wall between them.

What started as an investigation related to Moss and Burfoot turned into an investigation of McDonald, whose initial lack of cooperation, combined with other factors, made the investigator suspicious. After discerning that McDonald’s use of the word “escrow” was both “imprecise, and consequently, misleading,” they uncovered a convoluted process of handling partial payments. (Although the City spent several million on a new computer system in 2007, it can’t handle the partial payments correctly, either.  That the investigator found this to be the case despite the new $1 million billing system mentioned in the original article is troubling.)

Once it was determined that there was no “escrow” account, the investigators looked at a couple of other issues surrounding McDonald. Although they found a couple of minor problems with her campaign finance reports, the investigation cleared her.

Getting back to the original complaint, Bushnell found that Burfoot had nothing to do with the disclosure of information to the reporter. In addition, he noted that there are numerous exceptions to the general rule cited in § 58.1-3 and that Moss’ actions met one of them.

Bushnell concluded his letter by saying:

I hope that this investigation will help them bear in mind that the public is generally best served when the public servants build bridges rather than walls.

I’m guessing the two haven’t made up.