Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder yesterday promised "appropriate action," including possible firings, following an audit that found excessive misuse of computers at the city's print shop.

"Before I arrived, there were zero restrictions on employee computer use, and we uncovered numerous abuses of visits to inappropriate sites, from desk clerks all the way up to City Council. As a result, we installed filters on every city computer to prevent this type of abuse," Wilder said in a statement.

"Whenever we find employees who misuse city computers on the job, we will take the appropriate action, up to and including termination."

A city inspector general's report released Tuesday cited misuse of city computers by four employees in the print shop.

One employee averaged more than 4,700 Web site visits per day from December to April. The employee tried more than 600 times to view inappropriate sites, including ones labeled "webdate" and "pornotube," according to the report.

Last fall, the Wilder administration announced plans to fire two employees, to suspend 81 and to issue written reprimands to more than 107 following an investigation into the use of city computers to access sexually explicit sites. A total of 555 employees were involved in the probe.

City Council President William J. Pantele, who was the only person publicly named by the administration, said he was cleared of any wrongdoing related to computer use in his office. The accusation was originally made by Wilder on the same night his administration unsuccessfully attempted to evict the school system from its City Hall offices.

The city print shop has about a dozen employees and a $600,000 annual budget.

Wilder spokesman Linwood Norman said yesterday that he could not estimate the number of potential disciplinary cases. "It's in the process."
Contact Will Jones at (804) 649-6911 or wjones@timesdispatch.com.