An audit finds that the city's fleet vehicles cost tens of millions of dollars and that their use is not always justified and poorly monitored.
Driving a company car home each night with free gas and maintenance has long been a cushy perk for hundreds of Los Angeles municipal employees. But in these difficult economic times, when the city is facing a $433-million deficit, some officials are questioning whether the expense -- in the tens of millions of dollars -- is justifiable.
In two audits released today, Los Angeles City Controller Laura N. Chick criticized the sometimes questionable use of vehicles in the fleet of more than 1,100 take-home cars. The vehicles, purchased at a cost of $27 million to the taxpayers, are assigned to hundreds of police and fire officials, elected city officials, their staffs and city department heads.
Auditors for the controller also determined that a portion of the more than 2,000 other cars assigned to the city's departments, which were purchased for $50 million, as well as some of the cars that can be checked out at City Hall, are not being used regularly and that their use is poorly monitored.
The city spends $3 million a year on take-home vehicles for elected officials and their staff, and $7 million on so-called home-garaged cars for police and fire employees. But auditors found there was no evidence of consistent evaluations "to ensure each home-garaged vehicle is justified, warranted and based on the city's business needs."
"Out of the 167 audits that I've released, I have to say this is the most stunning example of how this city does business in an un-businesslike way," Chick said at a news conference. Although city officials should be setting an example for thrift in a tough economic period, when it comes to the city's vehicle fleets, Chick said, "We are doing anything but that."
In fact, more than two years after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa voiced concern about the cost of the hundreds of police cars that officers are taking home each night, the controller's office learned that the number of take-home cars assigned to Los Angeles Police Department officers shot up by 40% from 2003 to 2008, which LAPD officials said was due in part to expansion of the department.
As a matter of practice, more than 120 members of the police command staff are automatically assigned cars to take home. Some 650 additional vehicles, most unmarked sedans, are assigned to lieutenants and lower-ranking police officials who, in theory, get at least 10 emergency calls a year.
Though the city's police and fire departments have said the cars are assigned to help officers respond more quickly to emergency calls, auditors found "many employees rarely get call-outs and that they primarily use their vehicles to commute to and from work," one audit states.
More than a third of the lower-ranking police officials surveyed by auditors who take cars home (generally detectives or officers who must respond to emergencies) also live outside Los Angeles County, leading the controller's office to note that it was "questionable whether employees residing 50 to 90 miles away from the city can respond to an emergency call within the city limits in a timely manner."
The controller determined that the cars were rarely reassigned if the official got fewer than 10 calls annually. Most of the 130 take-home cars in the Fire Department are assigned to top brass and employees on the incident management team.
When Villaraigosa raised the Police Department's take-home fleet as a budget issue in 2006, Chief William J. Bratton defended the practice, stating that the Police Department should not face the same rules as other city departments because "all command and staff officers are subject to off-hour call-outs during emergency situations."
In response to Thursday's audits and the budget crisis, the LAPD is planning to revoke take-home cars for about 120 employees, Chick said.
The president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League said auditors overlooked the "priceless benefit of responsive law enforcement."
"Off-duty officers and detectives called to crime and disaster scenes often live dozens of miles from their stations," league president Paul M. Weber said in a statement. "The time they would lose responding to emergencies by driving to their stations to pick up an official vehicle, potentially bypassing the actual crime scene, could easily mean the difference between life and death, between a murderer being caught or escaping."
The controller's audits also focused on the city's 215-vehicle executive fleet -- cars assigned to the city's 18 elected officials, more than 120 of their staff members, and city department heads at a cost of about $6,100 per car annually.
Auditors found that there were nearly 50 reserve cars within that fleet that are used only as loaner cars if assigned cars are in the city's shop for repairs. The controller has suggested getting rid of half of the reserve cars to cut costs. That could be difficult because cars purchased by the city cannot be easily sold for up to six years due to requirements that the city first pay off the debt on the car.
Chick's audits also highlight the fact that there are no clear limits on the price of the take-home cars purchased for elected officials and city general managers, which have ranged as high as $40,707.
In 2003, City Council members eliminated the self-imposed $25,000 price cap on cars for their fleet and decided the cars should be eligible for replacement within three years.
That has meant that the average price of executive fleet vehicles has increased from $20,923 in 2003 to $30,327 in the last fiscal year, according to the audits. The most recent purchases for the fleet were three hybrid Toyota Highlander sport utility vehicles bought for more than $40,000 each, according to city auditors.
Each council office is assigned as many as eight cars. The mayor's office, which reduced the size of its fleet several years ago as a cost-cutting measure, has 13 cars, not including vehicles in Villaraigosa's security detail. The city attorney's office has 10 cars, while the controller has one, which she drives.
The controller recommended saving money by paying mileage to employees for using their personal vehicles.
Among the controller's other findings:
* Although the city Department of General Services is in charge of purchasing cars and providing fuel, top officials told auditors that they do not have oversight on how city departments use the vehicles. There is no systematic reporting about how the cars are being used or how much is spent on fuel.
* The controller found that it was unclear whether some of the vehicles in the fleet reserved for city departments were even needed. At federal agencies, a car must be driven 12,000 miles a year to be considered a necessary cost for a federal agency. Auditors found that the city vehicles average 6,268 miles a year, leading the controller to recommend shedding 179 vehicles from that fleet to save $1 million a year in maintenance and fuel costs.
* In the city's 130-vehicle motor pool -- cars that can be checked out by approved employees at City Hall -- the controller's office found on average over a nearly two-month period that 41% of the vehicles were available at the busiest times and that the least number of vehicles were available at lunchtime on city pay days. Chick has suggested eliminating 15 vans and 20 sedans from that pool to save $200,000 a year.
* A chief concern is the lax monitoring of the city's fuel transactions -- Chick cut up her own city-issued gas card during the news conference. She said there is little accountability for the gasoline credit cards issued to some city staff members, which have limits of $1,500 yet are to be used only in emergencies since the city has its own gas pumps around Los Angeles. Auditors found that 14% of the transactions over a 1 1/2 -month period last summer were after-hours. Although the General Services Department processes the transactions, they do not provide reports to departments. Recently, they have begun setting up a website that would help departments monitor those transactions.
* There are few systematic controls in place to make sure city has received the fuel it has purchased.
