I signed up to speak and received confirmation, but no link this morning. I'm a good-government advocate from Petersburg and strongly support this bill. Petersburg STILL needs this early warning system. Our city leadership believes that having accumulated a healthy cash balance means AAA fiscal management. Rather, we have 10 recurring material weakness findings in our latest ACFR, FY 2022 -- we're late (as usual) for FY 2023 submission. 5 of those material weakness in internal controls findings have recurred for 7 years. The city lacks the in-house ability to prepare up-to-date financial reconciliations -- so we are flying blind, until our paid accounting and auditing consultants untangle it for us. When I was budget director at VDH and VITA, material weaknesses, particularly recurring ones, were a real big no-no. Localities need to have the same healthy fear of adverse ACFR findings.

Good Morning Everyone, My name is Johnny Partin, and I am the Mayor for the City of Hopewell. Today I am speaking as 1 of 2 members on our city council that support this legislation. Our city can trace its problems back to approximately 2015. Had legislation like this been passed and in place back then, our present situation in the city would have been prevented. These issues and problems would have been addressed and fixed back in 2017 before I even got elected to city council. But we are here today addressing local governments experiencing fiscal distress. You all are in a great position to prevent what is currently happening in Hopewell from other localities across the Commonwealth. You all are in a great position to protect the financial health of all localities and improve the Commonwealth's, and lastly you are in a great position to protect our citizens and improve their quality of life. I urge you all to support this bill. You may not have a community in your district that is in fiscal distress today, but you may one day. No community is immune from fiscal distress. And wouldn't it be great to have a safeguard like this legislation in place to protect the citizens and get the community the help it needs. Thank you Johnny Partin

I am submitting the following comments on the proposed HB655. Through my 25+ years in closely following Hopewell government, coupled with my 45 years in Banking, and my recent four years on Hopewell City Council, I would like to say that while I am not totally opposed to this bill, I believe that the State's early intervention to help localities is much more critical than takeover should ever be. Coming in and having to take over a locality should not be the state's agenda unless absolutely necessary and then done so working with the locality to build for a sustainable future. The recognition a locality has an issue must start in the process much earlier to help review and assist that locality. The audit process is in place for that very reason and the state is not utilizing it to the ability I believe they should. As a Banker, I must adhere to strict audits from both the Federal and State levels, or risk penalties. The safety of taxpayer's dollars is paramount. Banks are audited on many aspects and are required to pass those audits. Why would the state allow even one annual audit to go past due without questions or one financial portion of an APA audit to fail without having a presence in the locality to follow up and work with the locality? Approximately, five to six years ago, our elected Treasurer at the time, failed APA audits. I called the APA Director myself to ask what was being done with regards to our failed audits and her response was that the APA did not have the schedule nor the staff to come back in to follow up. When localities transact with millions of local taxpayers' dollars and they cannot pass APA audits, and APA does not step in for discovery at that time because of staff and scheduling shortages, that makes NO sense and is wrong. Why do the audits? This is exactly where some of the initial emphasis needs to be placed. Audits, both by APA and outside firms, are only as good as the state's follow up on the audit's content and findings allows them to be! Hopewell is the poster child of how a new accounting system implemented poorly, can negatively impact everything and when of audits are not completed for years! Doesn't mean takeover should be immanent. The second issue I have is allowing elected Treasurers to have no knowledge and experience criteria required for election. I spoke with both Deputy Finance Director John Markowitz and Delegate Coyner about this issue last year. I do not know that either have any plans to suggest to the state that these criteria might be helpful to our localities, so I will. I do not understand why the State would allow anyone to be elected to a local Treasurer position with no knowledge of accounting or finance! Treasurers are independent of the locality authority as an elected official. Someone handling millions of dollars of taxpayer's money should have at least a basic knowledge of accounting or municipal accounting. As a citizen of Virginia, that is what I want. Would you let a Commonwealth's Attorney be elected without a law degree? Knowledge and experience is important for local financial health. It is time to focus attention to the issues to help localities early in the process and not threaten a takeover which ultimately benefits no one. Set up standards for audits and the process. Review and assist localities as soon as they fail an audit or get behind. Do not wait for years to pass.