There's simply no allowance for this double standard:

Ben Johnson, the city's director of emergency management, accepted a $500-a-month car allowance for 34 months while driving a city vehicle. This cost him his job.

In the meantime, Mayor L. Douglas Wilder received an even larger car stipend -- $700 a month -- while being provided with a vehicle by a city police security unit.

The mayor will apparently avoid any penalty, based on his pledge to reimburse the city. Johnson was afforded no such opportunity.

City Auditor Umesh Dalal wrote a letter to Sheila Hill-Christian, the city's chief administrative officer, urging disciplinary action after his office verified the tip regarding Johnson.

"Using the city vehicle while receiving an auto allowance appears to be a dishonest action that caused the city financial loss," he wrote.

If so, that applies to the mayor, who should not be allowed to police himself on this matter. And as far as disciplining anyone else goes, he has a credibility problem.

Regardless of whether Wilder knew if his allowance was still in force, the people behind the financial controls at City Hall were clearly asleep at the wheel. And that buck stops with the mayor.

Meanwhile, Dalal is having a field day. His short-staffed office has turned up $24.6 million in potential school savings and an additional $11.3 million in potential city administration savings.

Many of his office's recommendations have been implemented by the school system, he said yesterday. "We would have liked the city to be equally receptive."

Indeed, Wilder has been more of a profligate obstructionist than a true reformer. He has pushed Dalal to go after the school system but has been less forthcoming when the audits probed city departments.

If there were any justice, he'd be required to reimburse the city for that costly and pointless bit of foolishness that was the attempted School Board eviction. Instead, he has proposed increasing his press office budget by 30 percent while sticking homeowners with a tax increase.

You can't participate in the shoddy and shady practices you've pledged to eliminate and then cynically plead ignorance after nearly three years of getting an extra something in the paycheck. After all, $700 a month is a lot of cheddar to go undetected as part of your income. Monday's City Council meeting featured speakers who said they subsist on less than $700 a month.

But Wilder apparently thought he had it coming to him. His office noted Monday that the mayor has not received a cost-of-living increase on his $125,000 salary since taking office.

The point is both irrelevant and damning in its implications. Wilder appears to be making the case that he was justified in taking the car allowance because he's underpaid.

It's a strange argument from a mayor who rode reform into the office but whose shrill indictments have been undermined by his erratic behavior and sense of entitlement. He has failed to lead by example. As a result, his vehicle for change has veered wildly off course.
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.