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Procurement director outlines overhaul of Richmond’s p‑card program after audit; auditor says key policies still required
Summary
Richmond’s procurement director told the Finance Committee the p‑card program has been overhauled after a 60‑page audit: cards were reduced from roughly 320 to 73, Policy 15 rewritten, staff increased, vendor Card Integrity engaged, and mandatory training completed; the city auditor said some recommendations remain open until a discretionary‑spend policy and other documentation are provided.
Renee Almerez, Richmond’s director of procurement services, told the Finance and Economic Development Standing Committee the city has substantially restructured its procurement‑card (p‑card) program in response to a comprehensive audit that identified policy deficiencies, system weaknesses, oversight gaps and understaffing.
Almerez summarized immediate steps taken: pausing most p‑card activity, reducing the number of cards (from about 320 at peak to 73 active cards), blocking certain purchase categories (including broad food, travel and Amazon purchases except in narrowly approved circumstances), implementing mandatory preapproval and reconciliation requirements, revising the p‑card policy (Policy 15), expanding staff on the p‑card team from one to three people, and contracting with Card Integrity for data analytics and dashboards.
"We reduced cards from 320 cards at the time to 67. We're now sitting at 73 active cards," Almerez said, and described an overhaul of training and controls. She said all forms and policy documentation are now on the myCOR site and that training was run through NeoGov with knowledge checks; Almerez reported 100% course completion for cardholders and approvers who took the courses and about 145 people participated in the training and testing.
Almerez reported the audit produced 16 recommendations and 58 action items; she said 12 recommendations are closed, 3 have been submitted to the city auditor for closure, and one (recommendation 12) is pending submission. Closed items were returned by the auditor with disposition notes; items submitted for closure remain under auditor review.
Council members asked for clarity about what "closed" means. Almerez said submitted items are under review and the auditor will disposition them to closed if documentation and required changes are sufficient. The city auditor told the committee that Recommendation 1 (relaunching the p‑card program with foundational controls) will not be closed until a discretionary spending policy is provided and that certain threshold and conflict-of-interest items still require additional work or documentation.
Almerez described new metrics the city will use to decide whether to expand the program after a 90‑day soft relaunch: 90% cardholder reconciliation within five days of a purchase, 90% approver reconciliation, 98% transaction compliance, 95% documentation compliance and no more than a 5% violation rate. If the city does not meet those gates, it will not issue new cards.
The director said the procurement team also is building a bank of citywide contracts and pursuing strategic sourcing to reduce reliance on ad hoc p‑card purchases.
Next steps: the committee asked staff to return with stress‑test results and documentation that substantiate audit closures; the city auditor signaled follow‑up audits will occur after the stress test and that monitoring is planned.
