All Columbus Chief Financial Officer James Brigham wanted was to retire. Again.
Brigham had worked in the world of corporate finance, eventually retiring from Borders Books and Music. He ended up going back to work, working for Dollar General and, eventually, Petco. He retired from the latter job and went back to school, where he ended up becoming chief financial officer for Jacksonville State University in Alabama.
“Between the pandemic and recovery from a tornado that hit campus, quite frankly I was just worn out,” he told Columbus Rotarians at their club meeting Tuesday at Lion Hills Center. “I called it quits and retired. About a couple months into sitting on my butt, my wife reminded me that our 50 years of marriage could be coming to an end if I didn’t start helping out around the house.”
Brigham said he decided to look for a new adventure, and he found it with the city of Columbus.
Brigham was hired in March after a months-long search to replace former CFO Deliah Vaughn, who resigned in September 2021.
“In March 2022, everything kind of came to a head,” he said. “I had five final interviews with four colleges and the city of Columbus. Two of those were for president’s positions at community colleges. The others were financial leadership positions.”
The city of Columbus interview came first, Brigham said.
“I was delighted to cancel those other interviews,” he said. “I wanted challenges. I did not want a babysitting job where you go in and everything’s running well and you just don’t touch anything. I’m interested in a challenge.”
Columbus was certainly that, he said.
“Columbus offered the least pay and the most challenges,” Brigham said.
Brigham was blunt about those challenges.
“The Fiscal Year 2020 audit was not finished,” he said. “The auditors needed more from the administration, and most of it was from (Federal Emergency Management Agency) claims from the 2019 tornado and the (Coronavirus Aid, Recovery and Economic Security Act) funding. We’ve provided most of the documentation now, but there will be some internal control failures we’ll need to address.”
The accounting system was “completely new to me,” Brigham said, and there was no documentation or procedural manuals.
“The previous administration had depended on Excel spreadsheets for their budgeting processes,” he said. “Excel spreadsheets scare me because it’s too easy to make mistakes. A formula failure in the budgeting spreadsheet led to a budget shortfall of slightly over $1 million.”
A draft FY 2022 budget included $1.5 million in solid waste-related expenses that were not properly noted prior to Brigham’s arrival. That was corrected before the council approved a final, trimmed down budget.
Bank reconciliations were not completed properly in the past either, Brigham said.
“We are working through all these problems,” he said. “These are all challenges I knew we would face. We’re getting those problems taken care of and we’re getting the records corrected, and they’re going to stay corrected.”
Brigham said he was “keenly concerned about a lack of depth” in city financial administration.
“One of my goals is to ensure that city functions don’t depend on one person,” he said. “That’s been a problem in the past. We need to improve policy manuals, we need to cross-train personnel and we need to improve procedures documentation.”
One bright spot for the city is its sales tax collections, he said.
“The No. 1 source of funds is sales tax,” he said. “(In FY 2022) we exceeded our budget by over $1 million. My concern is if the economy drops into a deeper recession, what do we do? That’s why we were conservative in our budget process.”
Brigham said the city budgeted $9.6 million in sales tax revenues in the FY 2022 budget but actually received $10.8 million.
Currently sales tax collections are going up statewide, he said.
“When we talked to government consultants, one of the things they said was that through the pandemic and everything we’ve had, sales taxes continue to grow,” he said. “They are growing at a rate higher than most people would have expected. As long as Columbus and the county continue to grow, I feel comfortable sales tax will be a steady long-term funding opportunity.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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