Jamie Bandy Returns to City Hall as Director of Administrative Services and City Treasurer
Jamie Bandy Returns to City Hall as Director of Administrative Services and City Treasurer
LodiEye — May 2026
Summary
The Lodi City Council’s May 6, 2026 agenda includes the appointment of Jamie Bandy as the city’s next Director of Administrative Services, with an effective start date of May 12, 2026 and a fully-burdened compensation package valued at approximately $315,000 per year. The same agenda action designates Bandy as the city’s City Treasurer, the statutory officer responsible for the custody and investment of public funds. The appointment closes a high-profile vacancy that has shadowed the city since the 2025 forensic-audit fallout, returns a Lodi-rooted public-finance professional to City Hall after roughly seventeen years away, and pulls together Finance, Human Resources, and Information Technology under a single executive who has run each of those functions in different forms during her career.
- Position: Director of Administrative Services (oversees Finance, HR, IT)
- Concurrent Role: City Treasurer of the City of Lodi
- Effective Date: May 12, 2026
- Total Compensation (Fully-Burdened): ~$315,000 / year (salary, benefits, PERS, taxes)
- Coming From: Director of Finance, El Dorado Irrigation District
- Lodi Residence: Long-time Lodi resident
The Appointment in Context
The Director of Administrative Services is one of the most consequential executive roles in the City of Lodi’s organizational chart. The department combines three back-office functions that, in larger cities, are typically led by separate department heads: Finance (budget, accounting, treasury, utility billing, business licensing, and investment of city funds), Human Resources (recruitment, classification and compensation, labor relations, benefits, and risk management), and Information Technology (systems administration, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and software). The city’s January 2026 recruitment posting described the role as oversight of the operations that “power” the rest of city government, with explicit responsibility for budgeting, long-range financial planning, labor and workforce programs, technology strategy, and process improvement.
For Lodi, the timing is significant. The city has spent the past eighteen months working through the aftermath of the Carney–Magee period in the Finance Division: the Moss Adams internal-controls review of June 2025, the Hoslett Forensics report presented to Council in April 2026, and the lingering vacancy at the top of Finance that earlier recruitment cycles had failed to fill. Filling the broader Administrative Services position with a candidate who carries both deep public-sector finance experience and a Lodi residency address answers two political questions at once: who can run the technical work, and who can be trusted to stay long enough to finish the cleanup.
What “Fully-Burdened” Means
The $315,000 figure is not a base salary. In municipal compensation reporting, a “fully-burdened” cost includes base salary plus the employer-paid share of CalPERS retirement contributions, Medicare and Social Security taxes (where applicable), health and dental insurance, vision, life insurance, deferred compensation match, and other benefits assigned to the position. For a department head in a city of Lodi’s size, the base salary itself is typically in the $190,000–$230,000 range, with the remainder of the fully-burdened total made up of pension and benefit costs. The figure is the number that hits the city’s general ledger, not the number on the employee’s W-2.
Who Is Jamie Bandy?
Bandy is, in a real sense, returning home. Public records and her professional profile place her career arc as a twenty-plus-year journey through California public-sector finance that began at Lodi City Hall, expanded through one of the fastest-growing cities in the Sacramento region, and most recently took her to a special-district director role in El Dorado County. Through all of it, her residence has remained in Lodi.
She holds an Executive Master of Public Administration (EMPA) from Arizona State University, a degree program oriented toward working professionals already in senior government roles. Her published professional skill set emphasizes collaborative leadership, cross-functional team management, strategic thinking, and diversity and inclusion — the kind of soft-skills profile that maps well onto an Administrative Services portfolio that sits at the intersection of operations, labor relations, and technology change management.
Career Timeline
The career path below is reconstructed from public professional listings and government compensation records. The progression shows a steady climb through analytical roles into management and ultimately into department-head responsibility — with each move bringing larger budgets, more direct reports, and broader fiscal authority.
- 2002Administrative Assistant · City of LodiEntry-level role in Lodi city government — the first chapter of what would become a public-finance career. This is the same building she will walk back into in May 2026.
- ~2005–2009Budget Analyst · City of LodiPromoted into the analytical side of finance, working on the city budget — the same document she will now own as Administrative Services Director.
- 2009Management Analyst · City of Elk GroveMade the move to Elk Grove during a period of rapid suburban growth in southern Sacramento County. Elk Grove’s finance operation was building out to match the city’s population trajectory, creating opportunity for upward mobility.
- ~2011–2015Finance Analyst II · City of Elk GroveMid-career analytical role with greater technical depth across budgeting, revenue forecasting, and financial reporting.
- ~2015–2022Revenue Manager · City of Elk GroveFirst management title — responsibility for the revenue side of the city’s operating budget, including business licensing, utility billing, accounts receivable, and tax administration. The Revenue Manager role in a city of Elk Grove’s size typically supervises a team and reports to the Finance Director.
- 2022–2026Director of Finance · El Dorado Irrigation DistrictFirst department-head role. EID is one of the larger water districts in the Sierra foothills, serving roughly 125,000 customers across El Dorado County. The Director of Finance position carries responsibility for ratemaking, capital financing, debt administration, and investment of district reserves — the special-district equivalent of a municipal Finance Director.
- May 12, 2026Director of Administrative Services & City Treasurer · City of LodiReturns to the city where she started, this time as a member of the executive team. The Administrative Services portfolio expands her remit beyond finance into HR and IT, and the City Treasurer designation gives her statutory custody over the city’s investment portfolio.
Career Progression: Title Seniority Over Time
Source: Indicative seniority level by year reconstructed from public professional listings and government compensation records.
Professional Skill Set
Bandy’s published professional profile lists a set of competencies that line up cleanly with the demands of an Administrative Services Director portfolio. The mix tilts toward leadership and cross-functional collaboration rather than pure technical accounting — which fits the role: at this level, the job is less about closing the books and more about steering people, systems, and policy across departments.
The City Treasurer Designation
The May 6 agenda action also names Bandy as City Treasurer, replacing the interim designation that has been in place since earlier in 2026. Under California law, the City Treasurer is the officer responsible for the receipt, custody, and investment of all city money, with statutory authority to manage the investment portfolio in accordance with the city’s adopted Investment Policy and California Government Code Section 53600 et seq. In Lodi, as in many California cities operating under a council-manager form of government, the Treasurer is an appointed administrative officer rather than an elected position, and the role is typically attached to the Administrative Services or Finance directorship rather than held separately.
Folding the Treasurer role into the Administrative Services Director position concentrates statutory financial authority and operational management under one accountable executive — a structure that matters in the post-audit environment. The Moss Adams report and the Hoslett Forensics review both flagged the value of clearer lines of authority around investment oversight and procurement; consolidating Treasurer authority with the department-head responsibility for Finance reduces the gaps between policy, signatory, and day-to-day controls.
Department Scope: What She Will Run
The Administrative Services Department is a three-division operation. The chart below shows an indicative breakdown of where the department’s work load typically sits in a city of Lodi’s size; the actual headcount and budget allocations will be visible in the FY 2026–27 budget the new director will help shape.
Administrative Services Department: Functional Areas Under Director
Source: Indicative functional weighting across the three divisions reporting to the Director of Administrative Services.
Finance Division
Budget development and monitoring, accounting and audit, accounts payable and receivable, business licensing, purchasing, utility billing, treasury and investments, and debt administration. This is the largest division in headcount and the one most closely tied to Council policy through the budget cycle.
Human Resources Division
Recruitment and selection, classification and compensation, labor relations and bargaining-unit MOUs, benefits administration, employee development, risk management, and workers’ compensation. The city has been working through successor MOUs with several of its bargaining units; HR is the operational engine for that workstream.
Information Technology Division
Network and systems administration, cybersecurity, ERP and finance-system support, GIS, telephony, and end-user support across all city departments. IT’s footprint has grown over the past decade as more municipal services have moved online and as cybersecurity has become a board-level concern for cities of every size.
Why This Hire Matters Beyond the Title
Three factors give this appointment outsized importance for Lodi residents. First, it closes a recruitment gap that earlier cycles had not been able to fill. The Finance Director position alone had previously attracted limited applicants, with several backing out of the process. Bringing in a candidate who already lives in Lodi, has run a finance department, and has direct prior experience inside this exact city government materially reduces the risk that the position turns over again in twelve to eighteen months. Second, the consolidation of the Treasurer designation with the Director role aligns Lodi’s statutory financial authority with its operational management — a structural improvement that audit reports have implicitly endorsed. Third, the Administrative Services portfolio is where the city’s next several years of strategic work will be done: the FY 2026–27 budget, continued labor negotiations across the remaining open bargaining units, technology modernization, and the long pension-stabilization arc the Council adopted as a Strategic Vision priority in January.
The Bottom Line
Jamie Bandy walks into a department that has been understaffed at the top, scrutinized in the press, and asked to deliver against an ambitious Strategic Vision — all at once. What she brings is a Lodi address, twenty-plus years of California public-sector finance experience, a graduate credential aimed squarely at this kind of role, and the rare combination of having actually worked inside this building before. The May 12 start date gives her about seven weeks to find her footing before the FY 2026–27 budget hits Council. The next twelve months will tell residents whether the right person is finally in the right seat.
This LodiEye civic-leadership article was produced using artificial intelligence tools under the direction and editorial review of Lodi411’s human editor. Lodi411 uses multiple AI platforms in its research and publication workflow, including Anthropic’s Claude (primarily Opus and Sonnet models) and Perplexity AI across a variety of large language models offered by each. These tools were used in the following capacities:
Source Discovery: AI-assisted search and retrieval identified public professional listings, government compensation records, the City of Lodi recruitment posting, the Lodi City Council agenda center, and prior LodiEye coverage of the city’s 2025–2026 leadership transitions. Perplexity AI was used for initial source discovery and real-time agenda retrieval; Claude was used for deeper analysis of identified sources.
Credibility Validation: AI cross-referenced career-history claims across multiple independent sources, prioritizing in this order: government and special-district websites, professional profile databases, agency compensation records, and prior reporting. Multiple AI models were used to independently verify Bandy’s role progression, dates, and educational credential before inclusion.
Analysis and Synthesis: Claude Opus and Sonnet assisted in mapping the appointment to Lodi’s post-audit context, articulating the structural significance of consolidating the City Treasurer designation with the Director of Administrative Services role, and constructing the seven-step career timeline from disparate public-record fragments.
Presentation: Claude assisted in drafting, structuring, and formatting this article for clarity and readability, including the Kendo UI chart configurations, the career timeline visualization, the department-scope donut chart, and the responsive accessibility scaffolding consistent with the LodiEye publishing template.
Final Review: Multiple AI models reviewed the completed draft for factual consistency, source attribution accuracy, logical coherence, and balanced presentation. All editorial judgments, analytical conclusions, and publication decisions were made by Lodi411’s human editor.
Lodi411/LodiEye believes transparency about AI use in journalism serves both readers and the profession. We use multiple AI platforms — including Anthropic’s Claude (Opus and Sonnet) and Perplexity AI — as research, analysis, and presentation tools, not as autonomous authors. All editorial judgments, analytical conclusions, and publication decisions are made by Lodi411’s human editor, who directs and reviews all AI-assisted work.
References
- City of Lodi — City Council Agenda Center (May 6, 2026 Regular Meeting Agenda)
- City of Lodi — Administrative Services Director recruitment posting (Careers in Government)
- City of Lodi — City Manager / Executive Team
- El Dorado Irrigation District — Director of Finance professional profile
- El Dorado Irrigation District — agency website
- City of Elk Grove — agency website
- California Government Code — Investment of Surplus Funds (§53600 et seq.)
- LodiEye — February 18, 2026 City Council Meeting Coverage
- LodiEye — Civic Journalism Archive
This article was produced by LodiEye for Lodi411.com. Comments, questions, or corrections: editor@lodi411.com.