There has been some debate over the years as to whether the position of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ city comptroller should continue to be an elected post. As the city’s fiscal official, a big part of the job is to pay city contractors and carry out other routine functions that are less political than clerical. Doing it effectively is less about providing inspiring vision than basic hands-on management of public funds and a staff.
On that front, incumbent Comptroller Darlene Green has stumbled somewhat in the more recent of her 30 years in office.
A Post-Dispatch investigation in late 2023 reported that contractors were going unpaid for months because of snafus related to staffing issues and technology in Green’s office. Just last month, Green was caught flat-footed by the revelation that a top auditor in her office has a side business involving a top city contractor, raising serious conflict-of-interest questions.
People are also reading…
Then there have been her reportedly chronic absences from City Hall — sometimes to the point of employees having to seek her out at home to sign documents.
Perhaps some of this is the natural result of having been too-comfortably ensconced in office since 1995. We’d recommend that it’s time for the voters to retire Green. We endorse her challenger, former alderwoman and former state legislator Donna Baringer, for comptroller on April 8.
Baringer served as an alderwoman from 2003 to 2017 and was a state representative from 2017 until she was term-limited out in January.
In her interview with the Editorial Board, Baringer focused on the right priorities: More public transparency by the office, better employee relations as a way of rebuilding and maintaining staff, aggressively confronting conflicts of interest in city contracting.
Her background in both the Board of Aldermen and the Legislature provides a solid foundation for the comptroller’s office, which must deal with issues related to both city and state fiscal policies. She said she would work to modernize the office and oversee a thorough audit of its operations.
She also made a vow to us that shouldn’t have to be made, but in this case is relevant: “I will actually show up for work.â€
Green, to her credit, met with the board despite some of our more critical stances recently about her office. She said payment lapses for contractors have been reduced to a few days and that she keeps “regular†office hours.
She touted the city’s credit rating, up from triple B to triple A during her tenure. But that positive development coincided largely with a post-pandemic period during which the city was unusually flush with cash from the Rams’ settlement and federal relief funds. No one expects that situation to continue indefinitely.
We were taken aback when Green, apparently leaning into the anti-incumbent fervor out there today, declared of Baringer: “My opponent is a professional politician.â€
If there’s one thing a comptroller should be good at, it’s math. Baringer’s aldermanic and legislative terms totaled 22 years and she’s currently out of office; Green is and has been comptroller three unbroken decades. With rough fiscal seas likely ahead, it’s time for a change.
