On February 3, 2022, City Manager Zach Walker issued a statement announcing the initial investigation into a whistleblower report alleging overtime mismanagement within the Independence Police Department.

Following this announcement, the City retained Dan Nelson of Spencer Fane LLP, to serve as an independent Special Counsel. In July 2022, Mr. Nelson publicly shared the results of his investigation, which resulted in 30 recommendations to curtail future overtime and procurement issues. These 30 recommendations fall within six categories:

• Facilities maintenance and construction management
• Procurement training-staffing and compliance
• Overtime
• Police officer fatigue
• Accrued leave usage
• Pension padding

Following the release of the report, City Manager Walker developed a multi-departmental task force to implement the recommendations. The Task Force has implemented multiple policy changes that align with the Special Counsel’s recommendations. The City has now addressed 25 of 30 recommendations, though many of these constitute items that will require ongoing review and evaluation on an annual basis. Highlight's of the implementation efforts to date include:

A comprehensive policy regulating construction and facility management (AP 2023-02) has been adopted and addresses 6 of the 7 recommendations from Special Council. The last recommendation will be an annual assessment of staffing levels within the Municipal Services Department. As we enter the budget season, we will ensure we have adequate staffing to complete the demands of construction and facility requests.

An internal review of the Procurement division, including an audit on staffing levels, p-card policies, and financial oversight of projects, has been completed. The Procurement Division complied with Special Counsel’s recommendation of increasing our staffing levels, moving from one staff member to three. We also worked our third-party vendor to provide the City with the ability to increase our auditing abilities with all City issued credit cards, have modified monthly limits, increased the number of approvals needed in the reconciliation phase, implemented stringent receipt requirements, required training, and report back to all Department Directors if information is missing or appears to be in any violation throughout the process. These changes have fulfilled all 4 of Special Counsel’s recommendations in this category.

The bulk of the Special Counsel’s recommendations lay in the area of ‘overtime’. The Task Force has addressed the 12 recommendations and corrected 8 of them through the implementation of AP 2023-3. One of the 4 outstanding recommendations is the Payroll Division being tasked with researching overtime management systems that are digital, compatible with Munis and are smartphone compatible. This is a lengthy process and at this time we have no substantial update to provide. The remaining recommendations will be addressed when we open contracts with our Bargaining Units.

The Task Force is actively working on the three remaining categories, which build off of the corrective measures they have already taken.  The Task Force will continue their efforts implementing good internal controls, policies and working with each of the Department Directors to ensure that we are collectively exceeding expectations.