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Wilmington City Council's Hanifa Shabazz calls for state audit of discretionary funds

Delaware Public Media

Following controversy about lack of oversight of Wilmington City Council’s discretionary funding, Wilmington City Council president Hanifa Shabazz has asked the state auditor’s office to step in.

The audit request comes after the News Journal reported recently that Shabazz gave money to her predecessor as a sort of political favor.

State auditor Tom Wagner says the scope of the audit has yet to be determined, but it will focus on council’s discretionary expenditures.

“So we probably would classically just look at sort of the general policies and procedures in place to see if they were followed," Wagner said.

Wagner says he’s looking at how much more his office could do.

“The question does become: do we want – would we have the right, or do we have the ability – to go down to the sub recipients?”

By sub recipients, Wagner means the organizations that council has given discretionary grants to. But he's still unclear about the scope of the audit.

 

He’s not sure whether he’ll audit the books from just the current administration, or take a more retroactive look. He says he plans to meet with Shabazz to discuss these issues soon.

 

Wagner adds he’d like to get the audit done “reasonably quickly,” but isn’t prepared to offer a timetable yet.
 

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