It was no secret at Richmond City Hall that city Public Works Director Emmanuel O. Adediran was doubling as project manager for a new $5.3 million sanctuary that First Baptist Church of South Richmond is building in Chesterfield County, the Free Press has learned.

According to a highly knowledgeable source, “everyone knew (Mr. Adediran) had been asked by the mayor to help with the church project.”

Mr. Adediran is a volunteer associate pastor at the church and one of at least six high-ranking city employees who is a member of First Baptist, where Mayor Dwight C. Jones is senior pastor.

The source spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized by the city to comment on the controversy concerning Mr. Adediran’s work for the church working at City Hall.

Despite allegations that he improperly did work for the church on city time, Mr. Adediran actually had permission, the source insisted. While there apparently are no signed documents, Mr. Adediran followed protocol, the source said. In 2013, he verbally notified his superiors about his outside work on the church project and received permission to be involved with that development so long as it did not interfere with his city duties, according to the source.

At the time, Mr. Adediran’s city personnel evaluations rated him as conscientious and capable, and he had been promoted from his initial job as an operations manager to deputy director for general services, the source said.

He would be promoted to interim Public Works director and then department director after James A. Jackson, the former director, resigned in May 2015.

Mr. Jackson did not respond to Free Press requests for comment.

Mr. Adediran was counseled to avoid possible conflicts, such as driving a city car to the church site, the source said, but otherwise received no criticism for spending some time on the church development during city business hours. Email records show he sometimes used his city computer to communicate with companies working on the church site, according to City Auditor Umesh Dalal.

Some of those companies were found to have received city contracts, although no evidence has developed that this was more than a coincidence. However, Mr. Dalal determined that the church identified the companies by the same vendor numbers the city assigned to identify them.

Despite his double duty, Mr. Adediran “made sure that he got his work done. He stayed late and came in on weekends” to get assignments finished on time, the source said.

Mr. Adediran has been keeping mum, but concerns about his work on the church project during city business hours have raised questions about whether Mayor Jones or those who belong to his church failed to keep a firewall between their church membership and their work for the city.

There are also questions about whether Mayor Jones used his position to help get members of his church hired for city jobs or protected them when problems arose.

The mayor has insisted he has kept his two roles strictly separate since taking office in January 2009 and that city employees who belong to First Baptist were hired on merit, not because of their connection with him or the church.

In a brief interview Tuesday, the mayor declined to comment on whether he had asked Mr. Adediran to serve as project manager on the new sanctuary.

“I don’t discuss church business,” Mayor Jones said.

He said he also was unaware if Mr. Adediran had sought permission from his city job superiors to work on the church project. “He was not a direct report (to me) so I don’t know,” the mayor said.

The controversy over Mr. Adediran’s role began when Mr. Dalal issued a report earlier this month alleging Mr. Adediran spent 38 hours during city business hours managing the church project in the past 18 months.

In his report, Mr. Dalal did not mention whether Mr. Adediran had received permission. “I did not see any evidence of that,” Mr. Dalal said Tuesday when asked.

In the wake of Mr. Dalal’s report, Selena Cuffee-Glenn, the city’s chief administrative officer, in concert with Mayor Jones, required Mr. Adediran to give up 38 hours of vacation time as punishment “out of an abundance of caution.” Mayor Jones indicated that the mere appearance of a conflict of interest required action, even if Mr. Adediran had done nothing wrong.

So far, Mr. Dalal appears to have conducted the only investigation. City Council, which under the City Charter is empowered to look into misconduct on the part of any city officer or employee, including the mayor, has taken no steps to do so.

Separately, Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael N. Herring also has notified Mr. Dalal that his office would not undertake an investigation.

Mayor Jones sent a request late last week to Col. W. Steven Flaherty, director of the Virginia State Police, requesting that the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation review the auditor’s findings in the Adediran case.

Mayor Jones said Tuesday that he made the request because the case “has been going in a million directions, and I wanted to bring in an independent third party to review the matter.”

He said that in making the request, he was not suggesting that Mr. Adediran or anyone else has acted illegally. However, if an investigation should ensue and should anything improper be found, “we’ll deal with that,” the mayor said.

However, questions quickly arose about how serious the mayor is about a probe.

Under state law, the State Police can respond to requests only from the governor and a few other officials, such as a commonwealth’s attorney. A mayor is not among the officials authorized to request investigative help from the State Police.

The mayor acknowledged as much Tuesday, but he said he has been told “the request has been received. We’ll see what happens.”

As of the Free Press deadline Wednesday, the State Police had not yet responded.

Separately, more than a dozen African-American pastors held a news conference Tuesday outside Richmond City Hall to criticize the reporting of the Richmond Times-Dispatch on the Adediran case.

The Rev. Michael Jones, pastor of Village of Faith Ministries in Henrico County, but no relation to the mayor, said after the news conference that the pastors believe the daily newspaper has published comments about African-American churches “that have no basis” and that disparage such churches. He was not specific. The pastors also expressed concern about the newspaper’s request for the church affiliation of city employees.

Rev. Jones and others said their purpose was not to defend the mayor and his dual role as a preacher-politician, but to protect an important community institution.

The Rev. F. Todd Gray of Fifth Street Baptist Church, Dr. Rodney D. Waller of First African Baptist Church and Rev. Jones organized the event.

Staff writer Joey Matthews contributed to this article.