Fort Smith Board approves internal auditor plan; hire-fire authority on agenda

The Fort Smith Board of Directors on Tuesday (June 3) voted to pursue three concurrent paths to fill the key role of internal auditor — a position vacant since April 2024. One path would involve continued support from a global tax and accounting consulting firm.

The board on April 22 unanimously approved a resolution to hire Rebecca Cowan for the position of internal auditor with an annual salary of $110,000. It was later learned that Cowan faced felony charges related to a 2024 stalking charge. On April 24, the board met in a special called session to rescind the resolution to hire Cowan.

Tracey Shockley, the previous internal auditor, left the job April 1, 2024, after nine years with the city. The internal auditor and the city administrator are the only city jobs with which the board has direct hire-fire authority.

After a lengthy discussion during Tuesday’s meeting, the board voted unanimously on a three-pronged plan that includes working with a staffing agency, negotiating a possible contract with a consulting firm to help with audit duties until an auditor is hired, and posting the job on the city’s website with responses forwarded to the board.

Portland, Ore.-based DPI Staffing will solicit candidates for the job. Director Lee Kemp will be the liaison with DPI’s Fort Smith office. DPI has agreed to work with the city at no cost other than any fees required to post the job to various websites. Any fees paid to DPI will not exceed $5,000, with those funds coming from the city’s budget for the internal audit department.

Director Neal Martin will be the board liaison with global tax and accounting advisory firm Baker Tilly — the company that has been helping the city with auditing support — to negotiate a contract to help manage the city’s internal auditing office.

Martin said preliminary discussions put the price of a possible contract in a $300,000-$500,000 range for an annual contract. He said Baker Tilly could be “up and running now,” while the effort to hire an internal auditor could take several months. He said Baker Tilly could turn over their work once an internal auditor is hired.

HIRE-FIRE AUTHORITY
Director Christina Catsavis on Tuesday returned to her push to shift the hire-fire authority over department heads to the board instead of it being with the city administrator.

The Fort Smith board in 2013 shifted the hire-fire authority for department heads to the city administrator. In 2015 there was an effort to return that authority to the board, but the board voted 4-2 in February 2016 to keep the authority with the city administrator.

She pushed to have it placed on Tuesday’s board agenda, but the motion did not receive the unanimous vote required to have an item placed on a board agenda during a regular voting meeting of the board. Voting to place it on the agenda were Directors Catsavis, George Catsavis, Kemp, and Martin. Opposing the agenda placement were Directors André Good, Jarred Rego, and Kevin Settle.

The agenda will be on the board’s next regular voting meeting.

Christina Catsavis said the hiring and firing of department heads should not be the exclusive right of a non-elected administrator.

“These positions are too important to be left to one person,” she noted in a statement to Talk Business & Politics. “The elected officials should be shaping the leadership of the city government, because we’re the ones responsible for ensuring city leadership reflects the values and priorities of the community we serve. We’ve centralized too much authority with the city administrator, and it has created a power imbalance. We are elected to be a policymaking board. We’re not an advisory board, but under the current administrator system the board has been sidelined.”