Robert Baker, Cleveland's new finance di rector, inherits a mess.

His immediate predecessors were incompetent, as a succession of blunders and outside audits have made all too clear. Under their nonleadership, Cleveland's bookkeeping grew so haphazard that nearly three months into the new year, the city still does not know precisely what its bottom line looked like at the end of 2001. Members of Mayor Jane Campbell's Finance Department task force say the city's books have not been reconciled regularly since at least the spring of 1999.

Recent years have brought revelations of mistaken payments and receipts. Procedures for tracking bills and authorizing expenditures have been routinely ignored.

Some at City Hall blame the computer system installed to head off a Y2K meltdown. Others say the software's fine, but a demoralized, constantly churning staff has not been trained to use it properly. Competence issues also need to be addressed. The very day Campbell hired Baker, she suspended the city's $80,000-a-year chief accounting officer; Shareen Jackson got her "business degree" from a diploma mill.

Baker's credentials are considerably more impressive. He earned undergraduate and law degrees at Yale University, served as budget director and acting finance director for former Ohio Gov. John Gilligan, then moved to the law firm of Jones Day Reavis & Pogue, where his specialties included public finance. He has spent the last two years administering humanitarian projects in Albania. Let's hope the skills developed during that impressive career bring order to Cleveland's more than $1 billion a year civic enterprise.

The Plain Dealer

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2002