Bloomfield's Crisis of Governance Part 5.1: The Offline Government - Part 1
The Offline Government (Part 1):
The Blind Checkbook
On January 3rd, they boasted of "Strong Finances." On that same day, internal logs show the Town didn't know how much money was in the bank.
By Peter C. Frank
The Bloomfield Dispatch (Read Part 4.5)
BLOOMFIELD, CT — On January 3, 2025, the political leadership of Bloomfield took a victory lap.
In a public post, Town Council leadership boasted of the Town’s "AA+ Bond Rating" and "Strong Finances," explicitly crediting the "Mayor, Town Manager, and CFO Hill" for their stewardship. They told residents that the ship was steady and the course was true.
But internal correspondence obtained by The Bloomfield Dispatch reveals a stark contradiction: On the very same day leadership was publicly celebrating fiscal stability, the Finance Department’s own internal logs showed they had ceased reconciling the Town's bank accounts entirely.
In a staggering admission to the State Office of Policy & Management (OPM) on August 4, 2025, Finance Director Darrell V. Hill revealed that the Town had ceased reconciling its bank accounts and was unable to verify its own trial balance for all of fiscal year 2024.
This is the first of a three-part forensic review of the "13 Reasons" the Administration gave for this collapse—and why experts say they point to a structural failure of government.
The "Standard" of Governance
Before dissecting the failure, we must establish the standard. Jack DeOliveira, PhD, a governance expert and policy analyst with The Yankee Institute (a non-partisan 501(c)3 not-for-profit think tank based in Hartford, CT that researches Connecticut's public policies), explains that financial controls are not optional suggestions; they are the bedrock of public trust.
According to Dr. DeOliveira, when a municipality stops performing these checks, "it is not an administrative oversight, it is a structural failure that exposes taxpayers to significant financial risk."
Yet, throughout all of FY2024, the Town of Bloomfield did not perform one single reconciliation, according to Director Hill.
Key Admissions from the Audit Schedule
1. The "Offline" Year
Reason for Delay: "Financial activity not entered in System of Record (MUNIS) but rather tracked on spreadsheets."
Corrective Measure: Issued directive in March 2025 requiring entry within 3 business days.
2. The Reconciliation Gap
Reason for Delay: "No bank reconciliations for 15 months including all of FY2024."
Corrective Measure: Current staff is now automating the process with bank data files.
3. The Staffing Pivot
Reason for Delay: "Prior staff was focused on the FY2023 audit during FY2024."
Corrective Measure: Current staff is now handling daily activities alongside audit prep.
Why This Matters Now: While the Administration may argue that these "corrective measures" were implemented in March 2025, that defense misses the point. The critical issue is that for over 15 months—including the entire period the Council was passing budgets and assuring residents of "strong finances"—these controls did not exist. The safety net wasn't just broken; it was nonexistent.
The Breakdown: Reasons 1–5 (The Cash Crisis)
When pressed by OPM to explain why the FY2024 audit was past due, Director Hill provided a list of 13 specific failures. The first five reveal a department that lost track of its most basic asset: Cash.
Reason #1: "No bank reconciliations for the five primary bank accounts... for 15 months."
- The Reality: For over a year—including the entire period the Council was boasting of "strong finances"—the Finance Department did not verify that the money they thought they had matched what the bank said they had.
- The Risk: Without reconciliation, checks could be bouncing, funds could be misappropriated, or errors could compound unnoticed. As DeOliveira notes, "When a town stops performing reconciliations entirely, it loses the ability to verify where its money actually is."
Reason #2: "Trial balance not reconciled."
- The Reality: The "Trial Balance" is the master summary of all accounts. If this isn't reconciled, every financial report given to the Town Council during this period was essentially a guess.
- The Expert Verdict: Mary F. Fay, a former West Hartford City Councilwoman, Fortune 50 auditor, and candidate for State Comptroller reviewed this admission with alarm. "A 'structural failure' is quite serious," Fay noted. "Without knowing the depth of the structural failure... either [scenario] would put the accuracy and completeness of the financial statements in question."
Reason #3: "FY2024 remained unclosed/open 60 days after fiscal year end."
- The Reality: The Town could not close its books because it didn't know where the numbers belonged. This delay triggered the chain reaction that has now pushed the town toward state intervention. (On July 18, 2025, the State Office of Policy & Management (OPM) sent a letter to the Town advising it that it was eligible for Tier I MFAC oversight. See the full FOIA data packet released to this reporter by OPM.)
- The Risk: By failing to close the prior fiscal year, the Finance Department was effectively paralyzed, forced to operate the new FY2025 budget on theoretical estimates rather than actual closing balances. This "administrative hangover" meant that for two months into the new year, the Town had no confirmed financial baseline, making responsible forward-planning impossible.
Reason #4: "The Board of Education was not reconciled to the Town."
- The Reality: The School Board accounts for nearly 50% of the town's spending. Failing to reconcile this relationship means half the town's budget was effectively operating in a silo, unverified against the general ledger.
- The Risk: With the single largest cost center in the town operating unchecked, the Administration was flying blind regarding its total liquidity. If the Board of Education’s cash flow did not align with Town records, the discrepancy could hide massive deficits or cash shortages that the Town Council would be powerless to detect—let alone mitigate—until it was too late.
Reason #5: "Approximately 5% of bank transactions were recorded in the General Ledger."
- The Reality: The Administration’s own explanation is alarming in its vagueness. Director Hill stated that "approximately 5% of bank transactions were recorded," leaving it unclear whether he meant the department missed 95% of the data or was merely catching up on a fraction. That the Town cannot even clearly articulate the scale of the error is a failure in itself.
- The Risk: Instead of managing current-day operations, town staff were forced to divert their time to forensic data entry, frantically trying to key in an entire year’s worth of backlog just to "catch up." This flurry of retrospective activity invites significant error unless meticulous attention and proofreading controls are put in place—controls for which there is currently no evidence in the record.
The "Impact" on Trust
For residents, these technical admissions translate into a betrayal of trust. Gail Riley, a long-time resident, expressed the anger felt by many who attended meetings where everything was presented as perfect in a comment on a Facebook post in a private group (reprinted here with her permission).
COMING NEXT IN PART 5.2: The Digital Blackout. How the Town abandoned its $100,000 software to run a $117 million government on manual spreadsheets.
UPDATED: 3:13 PM ON DECEMBER 18 to fix a broken PDF link in some browsers.
The current Town Accountant was unable to reconcile bank statements a year ago so her solution was going to be to close the accounts and open new ones. True story.
ReplyDeleteIf that's true, then how did they eventually reconcile the accounts (because they were eventually reconciled, according to Director Hill)? 🤔
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