Rules committee advances Ben Rosenfield’s 10-year reappointment as controller

Ben Rosenfield, the city’s controller, addressed the Rules Committee on April 25 as the Board considered the mayor’s nomination to reappoint him for another 10-year term.

Rosenfield summarized the controller’s responsibilities — running accounting and payroll, managing debt, delivering audits and performance reports — and said the office is intended to be independent despite being a mayoral nomination requiring board confirmation. He reviewed work since taking the role: replacing an aging payroll system and a retirement-benefits system, and bringing a new financial and procurement system online.

On invoicing, Rosenfield gave concrete figures: since the system went live last July his office has processed about 350,000 payments totaling roughly $9,000,000,000. He said the office reduced invoices older than 30 days from about 4,000 to about 1,000 in an eight-week stretch — a roughly 75% drop — and estimated invoice delinquency is now about 2.5% of the roughly 40,000 invoices processed monthly. Rosenfield said he expects to reach ‘‘real-time’’ processing in the coming weeks and encouraged contractors with payment problems to contact his office directly.

Members of the public and several current and former colleagues spoke in favor of Rosenfield’s reappointment, praising his responsiveness and institutional experience. One public commentator made broad, unverified allegations about corporate tax practices that were recorded but not corroborated during the hearing.

Supervisor comments were uniformly supportive; a motion to approve the mayor’s reappointment was made and the committee forwarded the nomination with a positive recommendation to the full board.

What happens next: The nomination will proceed to the full board of supervisors for confirmation.