IG report faults Richmond election office for gun purchase, drinking during work hours, excessive spending and more

An internal investigation into the Richmond election office has found wide-ranging misconduct by top officials including misuse of city-issued purchasing cards, excessive spending, alcohol consumption during work hours and a nearly $230,000 remodeling of the office that didn’t go through competitive bidding because it was split into 21 smaller purchases.

In total, Richmond Inspector General James Osuna’s investigation of the election office determined that 25 of 26 allegations he looked into were “substantiated.”

Osuna’s office described its findings in a 24-page report issued to city officials Monday morning. The Richmonder obtained a copy of the report.

It’s unclear what the report could mean for General Registrar Keith Balmer, the city’s top election official, and Deputy General Registrar Jerry Richardson, who are not named in the report but are repeatedly referred to by their job titles. The document is likely to deepen the sense of crisis surrounding the election office, which has been battling allegations of nepotism and out-of-control spending for most of the year.

The inspector general’s office — tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in city government — has been looking at local election officials since at least late 2023 after receiving several complaints from people who previously worked under Balmer and Richardson. Osuna met with the Richmond Electoral Board in May to discuss his investigation, and city officials have been bracing for the report for months.

Though Balmer is considered a city employee subject to the workplace rules of city government, he reports to the three-person Richmond Electoral Board, which has the power to hire and fire registrars. Those board members are appointed by judges using lists of nominees submitted by local political parties. That means the unelected Electoral Board — not Mayor Levar Stoney’s administration or the City Council — has the final say on who should be in charge of running elections in the city.

Electoral Board Chair Starlet Stevens said Monday that the report aligns with her own findings after she started looking into how money was being spent in the office she helps oversee. She said she intends to call a Dec. 4 board meeting to discuss the inspector general's findings, probably in a closed session.

"It's a hot mess, to say the least," Stevens said.

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said that "the actions that have occurred at the Richmond Office of Elections are simply unacceptable."

"The taxpayers of Richmond deserve accountability, which is why I expect the Electoral Board to take appropriate action immediately," he said.

In a written statement, the Richmond City Council thanked Osuna for a "thorough investigation" and said his findings raise "serious concerns." The council called on the Electoral Board to "thoroughly review and respond to the findings."

"In doing so, the board must take on their direct oversight responsibility of the Director of Elections/General Registrar in order to maintain trust in the electoral system," the council's statement said.

Balmer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The inspector general’s report doesn’t recommend any particular course of action in response to the findings.

The policy violations identified in the report include:

• The use of a city purchasing card to prepay college tuition expenses for two employees in the office.
• Art purchases that added up to more than $16,000, including paying three Virginia Commonwealth University students $2,500 each for murals in the office lobby.
• The use of a city purchasing card to purchase a handgun so a temporary employee could work as an armed security guard despite not being authorized for armed security work.
• Paying a private security company to investigate alleged “election interference” by two former employees instead of referring the issue to local law enforcement.
• Failure to refer complaints dealing with sexual harassment and other abusive behavior to human resources.
• The filing of false information that misrepresented the details of how and why food was purchased at the city’s expense for Voter Registrars Association of Virginia events.
• Purchasing alcohol with public resources and allowing election office employees to drink alcohol during work hours.
• The signing of an “unnecessary” security contract for the office that included personal bodyguards for Balmer and added up to more than $200,000 in costs between Jan. 29 and May 14 of this year. The office was unable to pay some invoices from the security company and had to request more funding from the city because “budgeted funds were depleted.”
• The approval of “false time entries” for an employee who was largely absent from the office but still being paid as if they were working.

Though none of the violations appeared to have any direct impact on voting or election results, the inspector general found numerous examples of what his office called wasteful spending, abuse of authority and “fraud.”

Spending on the office

The report points to several costly expenditures on the election office building itself that didn’t follow proper protocols.

That included a 2023 remodeling of the office that cost $229,969 and raised eyebrows because the work was performed at a leased building the city doesn’t own and was done without a competitive process to find the lowest possible price.

“Carpet and flooring were replaced, wall repair was done, the interior was repainted, walls were reconstructed, a new door was installed in an existing wall, the bathroom in the General Registrar's office was remodeled with new fixtures and flooring, and electrical work was done,” the report says.

Under city policy, purchases expected to cost between $50,000 and $200,000 require a competitive process with at least three price estimates.

The inspector general’s office concluded “the remodel work was structured to avoid the requirement of a bidding process” by splitting the job into 21 smaller purchase orders.

“For example, one purchase order was for the purchase of the first-floor carpet,” the report says. “A second purchase order was for the labor to install the first-floor carpet. The same was done with the second-floor carpet.”

The report also faults Balmer for buying “high-priced” office furniture — such as a $2,189

leather sofa and $1,159 oak desk from upscale Richmond retailer LaDiff — as well as spending thousands on art without providing documentation justifying the prices as reasonable.

“The General Registrar was provided with several lower-priced furniture options; however, the office chose the highest-priced vendors,” the report says.

The security contract

Even though City Hall already had a contract with a security company, the registrar’s office took its own steps to beef up private security at its building. But what started as a contract for one guard at the election office for the 45-day early voting period grew into a larger expense and bills election officials couldn’t pay, according to the report.

The office agreed to pay $85 an hour for “personal protection services” for Balmer, the report says, even though the threats that apparently inspired the extra security were “generalized and not against anyone specific in the office.”

“Two Personal Protective Service guards accompanied the General Registrar to meetings and activities outside the office, outreach activities, lunch, and events such as a marathon race, a high school basketball tournament at the VCU Siegel Center, and a 4-day trip to an out-of-town conference where the security company was paid $24,726.15 in total to include their hotel rooms and hours worked while accompanying the General Registrar,” the report says.

No threats against Balmer were reported to Richmond police.

The election office also paid the security company for “investigative services,” including a $4,400 expense for an investigation into potential election interference by two former employees who were allegedly “attempting to interfere with Officers of Elections by encouraging them not to participate in future elections.” The report doesn’t describe the result of that investigation, but notes that registrars have no authority to hire private security firms to look into possible violations of election law.

The head of the security company told the IG’s office that Balmer had indicated the city attorney had signed off on the election interference investigation. The city attorney wasn’t consulted in the matter, the report says, and Balmer denied telling the security firm he had gotten approval from the city attorney.

“The General Registrar did not contact law enforcement, the Commonwealth Attorney's Office, the Attorney General's Office, or the Virginia Department of Elections regarding any alleged threats but took it upon himself to use city funds to initiate a private investigation,” the report says.

As the security costs grew, the office ran out of money to pay some of its bills.

“The Office of Elections could not pay the security company for the last three invoices and other vendors because budgeted funds were depleted, and the General Registrar had to request an additional allotment from City Council,” the report says.

Alcohol

Some of the costs included in the security contract, the report says, covered “the purchase of alcoholic beverages during work hours.” The security company would pay for the alcohol then invoice the city for the expense.

“The General Registrar allowed alcoholic beverages to be purchased through the security contract, consumed alcoholic beverages during work hours, and allowed employees to consume alcoholic beverages during work hours in direct violation of city policy resulting in a waste of government funds,” the report says.

Other employees admitted they and Balmer drank alcohol when they went out to lunch on work days, according to the report, a violation of city policy on substance use.

Balmer also used his government purchasing card to cover some alcohol charged to hotel rooms during a conference, despite alcohol not being allowed as a legitimate business expense 

The handgun

The report says Richardson gave her city credit card to another city employee to buy a handgun and other equipment to allow a temporary employee to serve as an armed security guard even though the temporary staffing agency that provided the employee “was not licensed or insured to provide armed security guards.”

When asked about the possibility of the election office buying a handgun, the report says, the city’s security manager advised Richardson not to make the purchase.

City policy prohibits guns on government property with exceptions for security guards working as contractors or employed by the city. The temporary employee the election office used for that purpose “was not contracted as a security guard and was not a city employee,” the inspector general’s office concluded.

“The General Registrar’s decision to have a temp employee provide armed security placed the city of Richmond in a position of liability and financial loss by having an untrained temporary employee provide security services which constituted an abuse of his authority,” the report says.

Handling of office problems

In August of 2023, a group from the Richmond election office attended a Voter Registrars Association of Virginia conference in Roanoke. 

Two employees — one a temporary worker and the other a city employee — in the group were dating and “shared a room” but had some sort of altercation that resulted in the temporary worker being “arrested for domestic assault on their partner.”

After the group returned from the conference, the “assaulted employee” stayed home from work on a weekday and “could not be reached.”

Balmer tried to resolve the matter by offering to let the employee stay at his house, the report says. But when that offer was refused, Balmer asked the purported assault victim to resign because of “safety concerns for the other employees.”

“The assaulted employee said they were told that if they resigned, the office could help them get unemployment benefits,” the report says. “The assaulted employee applied for unemployment benefits but was denied, citing their resignation. In their resignation e-mail sent to the General Registrar, the assaulted employee wrote that they were involuntarily resigning.”

Richardson told city human resources officials that the employee was asked to resign because they “cut off contact with the Office of Elections and canceled meetings.”

The inspector general’s office said the handling of the relationship trouble violated city policies on violence in the workplace and amounted to an “abuse of authority” when Balmer asked the employee to resign without “proper reasoning” and without consulting with human resources.

The probe also revealed Richardson mishandled complaints about an employee yelling and using “abusive language” toward others and continuing to ask a coworker out on dates after being told there was no interest.

Richardson didn’t forward those complaints to the proper human resources officials, the report says. When asked by investigators to provide a copy of the written complaint about cursing and yelling, Richardson told investigators the complaint “was destroyed because the employee withdrew their complaint.”

The employee denied withdrawing the complaint.

Purchasing cards

The report outlines numerous problems with the office’s use of city-issued purchasing cards, or “P-cards,” as they’re referred to in the report.

In the fall of 2021, Richardson used her card to purchase $477 worth of cloth face masks from a company owned by Balmer’s wife.

Balmer “committed fraud” on two occasions, the report says, by using his card to pay for group meals at Voter Registrars Association of Virginia events and misrepresenting the expenses.

For an event in December of 2021, Balmer put $967.50 on his city card, according to the report, then asked the VRAV to be reimbursed for the lunch bill because the city wasn’t paying for it. The VRAV sent Balmer a check for $735.84, but he didn’t cash it.

“When questioned, the General Registrar responded, ‘The city never got their money?’” the report says. “The General Registrar stated they were unaware of why the reimbursement form was done.”

Though Balmer filed a form saying lunch for 19 attendees was put on the card, receipts showed 25 meals were purchased.

At a similar VRAV lunch in December of 2022, Balmer listed the meal expense as being connected to employee training and filed a form only listing city employees and not the election officials from other localities who were in attendance.

“Registrars from other localities questioned the General Registrar using the government P-Card,” the report says. “The General Registrar responded by e-mail, saying it was related to city business when it was not.” 

Purchasing cards were also used to cover college tuition expenses for two employees without going through the regular process for helping employees with tuition assistance for educational opportunities that would benefit them professionally.

The election office paid $3,598 to the University of Maryland Global Campus and $5,721 to VCU.

Balmer denied knowing that Richardson’s card was used for college expenses, but the report says he “approved the purchase” in a city system.

“There was no claim of financial hardship for the employees, and no requests were submitted to Human Resources for approval,” the report says.

Another office employee used a card to buy lingerie, a video game controller and a nebulizer on Amazon. When the employee explained that the personal orders were accidentally made on the city’s Amazon account because the card info was saved from a prior purchase, they were told to return the lingerie but were allowed to keep the other items.

“The government P-Card could be accessed from their computer because they were using the city's tax-free Amazon account to make personal purchases, which has been done by several Office of Elections employees,” the report says.

The city vehicle

The only allegation the inspector general ruled unsubstantiated was a claim Balmer had improperly removed city logos from a Ford Explorer purchased for use by his office. The investigation showed Balmer followed proper procedures for both the purchase and the removal of the logos due to safety concerns.

However, the report found Balmer violated city policy on using the vehicle by taking it home and using it for “personal errands such as going to the cleaners and picking their child up from school.”