CAFO Screening Committee Unable to Find Suitable Candidates
by Bill Dusty
The Mayor’s Office announced today that the search for a new Chief Administrative and Financial Officer (CAFO) will continue after a city-appointed joint screening committee reported that they were unable to provide Mayor Domenic J. Sarno with a short list of three qualified candidates for the position.
At a 3:30pm press conference held in Room 220 at City Hall, Mayoral Chief of Staff Denise Jordan, reading from a prepared statement from Mayor Sarno – who was unable to attend due to a kidney stone diagnosis and back injury, announced that the screening committee informed the mayor that the original pool of eleven candidates “does not provide a sufficient number of candidates to complete their charge.”
The screening committee also requested that the search process be reopened and that the Springfield Finance Control Board provide the funding necessary to engage “a professional search firm to facilitate a new search process,” according to Sarno’s statement.
“I have reviewed and agree with the determination and recommendations of the CAFO Screening Committee,” Sarno’s statement read, “and have directed the Chair of the Screening Committee to immediately reopen the search. I have requested that the Screening Committee work expeditiously and thoroughly to complete the search process in order to ensure an orderly transition of responsibility from the State imposed Finance Control Board which will dissolve on June 30, 2009, and return local governance to the City.”
Screening Committee Chairman Steven F. Bradley said that the eleven candidates they reviewed had either no experience in city administration or, when they did have substantial experience, it was not from a city nearly as large as Springfield.
“We found it to be quite a challenge,” said Bradley, “for a member of a community of 20-to-25,000 to have the experience needed [to handle the task] presented by a city of 152,000 like Springfield.
“We determined unanimously we could not cull out of the original eleven candidates [three finalists] for the position,” Bradley said.
Bradley said that the committee intends to perform a comprehensive search both inside and outside of Massachusetts for qualified candidates, and that they hoped to have the renewed search process completed within 60 to 90 days.
The Screening Committee consists of seven appointed members: Mayoral-appointees Bradley (as Chair), Helen Coulton-Harris, Mary Ellen Scott, and Steven Valenti; state appointee Pam Kocher; and City Council-appointee Tim Rooke and School Committee-appointee Michael Rogers.
The appointment of a CAFO by the Mayor is required under a law enacted by Governor Deval Patrick this past January that officially transfers the reins of city government back from the state-appointed Finance Control Board to local rule.
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