Overview
In the course of our audit, we noted that the board of directors (BOD) of the Southfield Redevelopment Authority (SRA) is involved in the day-to-day management of the authority in ways not typical of a BOD. The BOD has not hired an executive director to replace the executive director who left the agency, and, instead, the BOD is performing some of the duties of this position itself. This is specifically called out in our audit for issues with reconciling bank account statements, but the involvement of the BOD in day-to-day management of SRA extends beyond this. We do not consider this a best practice and note that it can compromise the BOD’s ability to provide needed oversight to agency operations, as the BOD would be responsible for both performing management duties and overseeing them. This would be a management conflict and may result in less oversight, as BOD members may be less likely to question the work of their fellow BOD members.
We recommend that SRA examine these issues and develop an appropriate separation of duties between SRA management and the BOD across all agency functions. While perhaps well-intended to help SRA function without an executive director or to help save money by not hiring an executive director, this loss of management oversight increases risk for SRA and the Commonwealth, and we recommend that it be addressed.
| Date published: | December 20, 2024 |
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