Jones needlessly secretive about security detail

This is change we'd love to believe in.

Mayor Dwight C. Jones has made nice with the Richmond City Council and school system. One month into his administration, he has suffused City Hall with the fragrance of cooperation. All that's missing is a piped-in Muzak version of "Kum baya."

But on the matter of the mayor's security detail, Jones is embracing some of the less-endearing traits of his predecessor, L. Douglas Wilder.

Police Chief Bryan T. Norwood said cuts to the unit ordered by Jones will allow about $425,750 in personnel costs to be saved for other police programs.

What remains unclear is whether the savings would be realized annually or over some other period, and how much taxpayers will be spending on 24-hour protection for the mayor.

Also, a news release had no information on the cost and type of a new sport utility vehicle purchased for use by the detail.

Asked to provide a breakdown of the costs, Norwood told a reporter to file a request under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act -- which he did later that day.

But if the Police Department and mayor's office weren't prepared to provide details, why put out a news release trumpeting the savings? Directing a reporter to file a FOIA request is a nice way of saying, "Stick your concept of sunshine where the sun doesn't shine."

This is not how transparency works.

The security detail was established by then-Police Chief Rodney Monroe after Wilder took office. As of last spring, the city had spent $1.2 million on mayoral protection, according to police records provided to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

"It just doesn't seem to me that it should cost that much," Jones said during his campaign.

I'd argue that around-the-clock protection for the mayor is a luxury Richmond can't afford during these lean economic times. No Richmond mayor before Wilder received this caliber of police protection.

And some of them had a better case than Jones.

Henry K. Ellyson and George Chahoon both staked a claim to the mayor's job at the end of Reconstruction. Gunplay ensued before order was restored.

J. Fulmer Bright, who ruled Richmond with an iron fist from 1924 to 1940, probably could have used some security like Wilder had. The same goes for Henry L. Marsh III, the city's first black mayor.

As over the top as his protection was, Wilder could make a case. After he gave the School Board a verbal beat down in May 2006, then-School Board Chairman David L. Ballard, in a lamentably poor choice of words, told the media: "If I met with the mayor now, I'd have to kill him."

But Jones? He's on a charm offensive -- except with the media.

"The mayor is pleased with the changes as presented today and with the fact that systems have been put in place so that we may have an ongoing clear picture regarding security-detail expenditures," the mayor's press secretary, Tammy Hawley, said in an e-mail.

Unfortunately, the picture is not clear. Jones, an ordained minister, should know this much: The devil is in the details.

Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or .