Wayne County, Michigan, hires former Flint CFO

Wayne County, Michigan, has hired former Flint chief financial officer Hughey Newsome to be its new CFO.

Newsome resigned as Flint's CFO in March.

He joined Flint in November 2017 as interim financial officer, appointed by then-Mayor Karen Weaver. In his letter of resignation, Newsome stated “slander” and “politics” as reasons behind his decision to leave the post.

Hughey Newsome, Wayne County CFO

After his role in Flint, Newsome served as interim CFO for the city of Pontiac.

“We’ve put Wayne County on strong financial footing, but with Michigan’s broken municipal finance system, we are being pushed to do more with less,” said Wayne County Executive Warren Evans. “Hughey’s expertise is perfectly suited to that challenge. He is bright, eager and improvement focused and will help modernize and optimize our efforts to best serve the residents of Wayne County.”

The position had been filled on an interim basis by Mathieu Dube, since March 2019. Dube replaced Henry Dachowitz, who had been the county's CFO from January 2018 to March 2019.

Newsome said in a statement that he is looking forward to building on Wayne County’s positive momentum.

Wayne County is in its fifth year of balanced budgets. The county exited state oversight in 2016. The county's ratings, which had fallen to junk levels, have returned to investment grade. Moody’s Investors Service rates Wayne County Baa1. S&P Global Ratings rates the county’s issuer credit at BBB-plus and Fitch Ratings rates the county’s GOs BBB-minus. They assign stable outlooks.

The county has $72.3 million of outstanding limited tax general obligation bonds, $30 million of stadium refunding bonds issued by the Detroit-Wayne County stadium authority and $180.2 million of lease rental bonds issued by the Wayne County Building Authority.

The county entered the consent agreement in August 2015. The pact allowed the county to work with the state to renegotiate contracts, improve its cash position, and reduce underfunding in the pension system, resulting in the elimination of a structural deficit.

Since taking office in 2015, Evans' administration has eliminated a $52 million structural deficit and an $82 million accumulated budget deficit, delivered five consecutive budget surpluses, and increased Wayne County's pension funding from 45% to 61%.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
Career moves Michigan
MORE FROM BOND BUYER