By Kristen Hackbarth and Bob Conrad
This week City of Reno internal auditor Emily Kidd told council members that the city didn’t have any policies or procedures on the books for take-home vehicles, and what vehicle policies were in place weren’t really being enforced. A January 2022 report of Reno Police Department policies issued by an outside reviewer pointed out some of the same problems Kidd found.
Two years later, RPD is still supposedly kind of working to maybe fix the problems.
City Manager Doug Thornley said he was looking forward to seeing RPD’s new policies, but didn’t seem eager to get to work on vehicle policies for the rest of the city’s fleet—the majority of the city’s vehicles.
Anyone surprised?
As we reported as part of our investigation on city council member spending, back in 2018, Kidd released an internal audit that found, “Departmental policies detailing internal controls and procedures for departmental functions do not exist” with regard to training and travel.
The mayor, at the time, postured at being fired up to see new policies put into place and enforced. But more than five years later, our own reporting found that despite putting those policies in place, they weren’t being enforced. In fact, it only got worse.
Thornley’s seeming lack of concern or urgency must have Kidd banging her head against her desk on a near-daily basis. While her audits are meant to be independent, she’s also on the city manager’s team. As she investigates, reports and advises on best practices, it appears city leadership is only giving lip service to those recommendations while continuing on with business as usual.
We’ve heard and read some comments like “Who cares?” and “Is this really that big of a deal?” A few people minimized the issue while pointing to some of the other problems the city is faced with: housing, homelessness, micromobility and development. (It’s similar to the DARVO strategies invoked by many local politicos, their hired consultants and pals.)
It’s not an either-or situation.
The city doesn’t have to sacrifice effective policies and procedures that are actually followed to also have affordable housing and quality community services. Arguably, if the city put more emphasis on running a clean operation from top to bottom, it would have a greater ability to address some of those bigger challenges because less waste, fraud and abuse are bubbling to the surface on the regular.
When haughty, dismissive responses—and the blatant refusal to respond at all—are the default, it’s no wonder confidence is sorely lacking among downtown decision-makers.
