An attorney for Comptroller Max Frantz argues that testimony by City Manager Mark Washington and Chief Financial Officer Molly Clarin proves the city’s decision to restructure the Comptroller’s Office effectively violated the City Charter.

The accusation comes from a trove of documents that have surfaced in Comptroller Max Frantz’s lawsuit against the city. He launched that grievance after his office was forced to downsize and restructure by the city in January 2025.

Through the restructure, multiple staffers and aspects of Frantz’s job were reallocated to the Fiscal Services Department, which is overseen by Washington and Clarin. Frantz has since argued that the tasks now performed by his department are mandated to him by the City Charter, the city’s founding document, and that the city’s actions therefore represent a charter violation. 

While the Comptroller’s Office is laid out in the charter, the Fiscal Services Department and the CFO’s office are not.

Washington and Clarin each gave testimony, which Frantz’s attorney Nicholas Gumina said corroborates his claim that the Comptroller’s Office can no longer perform its charter-mandated duties. 

“Employees continue to perform substantive accounting work, including classifying transactions, reconciling accounts, correcting errors, making accounting adjustments, and preparing financial Statements,” Gumina wrote. 

“But those employees now answer to Fiscal Services management, outside the Comptroller’s direction and supervision,” he added. “Giving the Comptroller access to their completed reports does not satisfy the Charter’s separate commands that he keep the City’s accounts and prescribe its accounting methods.”

Gumina sat with several city leaders for depositions, including Washington and Clarin. The Kent County Circuit Court will hear verbal arguments in the case in November.

Mark Washington

Frantz in 2024 had reported Washington to Michigan State Police after the city manager made a $500 purchase for tickets to a downtown fashion show. Frantz believed that purchase to be improper, though prosecutors ultimately decided no crime had been committed. 

In December of that year, the City Commission voted to move 13 employees out of the comptroller’s office into Fiscal Services.  

Washington, in his testimony, explained the decision to restructure the comptroller’s office came in the wake of complaints received from employees working there. He said that the ensuing changes meant the Comptroller’s Office could no longer perform accounting services like payroll and accounts payable.

Gumina said transcripts of the conversation show that Washington agreed the same individuals that had been responsible for payment issuance, payroll, and accounts payable through the comptroller’s office were still performing the same function under Fiscal Services.

“And would it be fair to say that the accounting functions are all being done by the same people as well?” Gumina asks according to deposition transcripts.

“Yes,” Washington replies.

“They’re just — they’re no longer housed under the comptroller’s department?” Gumina asks.

“Yes,” Washington says.

Molly Clarin

Clarin made a similar acknowledgement in her deposition, saying a “power dynamic” occurred when Frantz continued to communicate with the relocated staffers. 

“And so you would agree then he had no — that the comptroller would have no ability to actually provide directives to these employees,” Gumina asks during the deposition.

“Directives as far as — yeah, what they do, correct,” Clarin replies. “You know, request for information is a different thing. But — but, yeah, he was not their supervisor anymore, or there was the hierarchical — well, there was no deputy at the time, so he wasn’t their direct supervisor anymore.”

Gumina wrote in a legal brief that this and other testimony proves that Fiscal Services now performs the work of the comptroller’s office. Doing so effectively sidestepped the process of amending the charter, which would require voter approval, Gumina claimed.

Documents

Included in the legal documents were materials found through discovery, the pre-trial process of gathering evidence.

One such item included an email exchange between Clarin and Frantz from February 2025 in which she instructed him to stop communicating with the employees moved under the Fiscal Services Department.

“These employees do not report to you and it is inappropriate, especially as an elected official, for you to give them direction,” Clarin’s email reads.

Another item included an agenda action request document presented to Washington in December 2024, which laid out the vision for the new Fiscal Services Department. That document acknowledged how the transition could create “tension” with the charter.

“Additionally, supervision of certain functions within a single department is in tension with the independent audit function of the Comptroller as outlined in the Charter, which presents additional risk to the City,” that document reads. “Therefore, it is recommended that several of these functions would more appropriately report to the Chief Financial Officer as part of the City Manager’s operational responsibilities.”

Gumina characterized this action as a power grab by Washington.

“The City justified the reorganization as necessary to correct an alleged Charter violation,” Gumina wrote. “Asked to identify that violation, City Manager Mark Washington explained that he believed the Comptroller’s staff should report to someone under his supervisory authority.”

“The supposed violation, according to Washington, was that employees performing the elected Comptroller’s duties did not answer to the City Manager,” he added.

Write to jackson@grherald.com