Mosby campaign says Cuffee-Glenn won’t return as chief administrative officer
One of the top contributors to Richmond mayoral candidate Michelle Mosby’s campaign is former City Hall chief administrative officer Selena Cuffee-Glenn, who was fired by Mayor Levar Stoney in 2019 after an investigation revealed several of her relatives had been hired to city jobs.
Cuffee-Glenn hasn’t donated cash to Mosby’s campaign, but campaign finance reports show she has acted as a consultant for Mosby and has provided in-kind services worth $22,400.
That puts Cuffee-Glenn among the top donors to Mosby, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, and her involvement with Mosby’s campaign has raised questions about whether Cuffee-Glenn could potentially return to City Hall if Mosby becomes mayor.
Mosby’s campaign says the answer is no.
“The campaign values her time and input, but she is retired,” said Mosby campaign adviser Don Mark. “Michelle will run a comprehensive and inclusive search for a CAO. She will consult with leaders from across the board, including voices from City Council in an open and transparent process.”
Cuffee-Glenn, a former city manager in Suffolk, was first hired as Richmond’s CAO in 2015 under former Mayor Dwight Jones, when Mosby was serving as the City Council president. Cuffee-Glenn remained in the position after Stoney took office in early 2017.
An inspector general report published in 2019 found that Cuffee-Glenn’s husband got a job as a city sheriff’s deputy and her daughter got a job with the Department of Public Utilities. Two second cousins and a niece or nephew were also hired.
The report found evidence that Cuffee-Glenn’s daughter may have received a higher salary due to her connection to the CAO. But Cuffee-Glenn didn’t appear to be directly involved and she told investigators she was unaware her daughter had been hired until after the job offer was made.
At the time, Stoney said he felt compelled to fire Cuffee-Glenn because the “conduct detailed in this report erodes the public trust, violates the spirit of good governance and has diminished my confidence in the CAO to continue to serve in her role.”
Former finance administrator Lenora Reid, who had worked with Cuffee-Glenn before as Suffolk’s finance director, then took over as CAO. Due to medical issues, she stepped aside in 2020, a move that led to the appointment of current Chief Administrative Officer Lincoln Saunders.
All five mayoral candidates this year have indicated they would bring in a new chief administrative officer or at least conduct their own search for a person who could execute day-to-day operations at City Hall.
At times on the campaign trail, Mosby has seemed to praise Cuffee-Glenn despite the controversial way her tenure at City Hall ended.
“We hired a seasoned CAO, someone that understood local government, who then hired a seasoned finance director,” Mosby said at one mayoral forum when describing how “things got done” during her time as council president.
To defend their performance, Saunders and his finance team have argued they inherited numerous problems from past administrations and have been working diligently to try to fix them.
Mosby has highlighted her time at City Hall working with a previous generation of leaders while also promising a new direction and a “back to basics” approach.
When the mayoral candidates were asked at one forum to name who they think has been Richmond’s best mayor so far, Mosby was the only candidate who said Jones. Her opponents either said U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, who served as a ceremonial mayor before Richmond adopted the strong mayor system, or former Gov. Doug Wilder, the city’s first popularly elected mayor in the modern era.
A pastor who served as the city’s mayor from 2009 through 2016, Jones appeared at a recent news conference with several other clergy members backing Mosby.
“It is important for me to have somebody who is grounded, somebody who has the ability to know the difference between right and wrong, somebody who will be integritous in the office,” Jones said of Mosby.
