Three Los Angeles municipal departments are unable to account for about a quarter of their equipment - merchandise valued at nearly $1 million - pointing to a worrisome lack of inventory control, an audit released Monday found.
While City Controller Wendy Greuel did not find any evidence of theft in the departments of Information Technology, Sanitation or Recreation and Parks, she said the findings highlighted a waste of taxpayer money during a time of fiscal crisis.
"What we found is that people are not minding the store," Greuel told a news conference. "We simply cannot afford to let taxpayer money be wasted by misplacing equipment or letting items sit unopened in storage."
She said some $250,000 in equipment had not been used for as long as seven years, the amount of time covered by the audit.
"This is a message to all city departments that we need to be able to account for the materials we purchase," Greuel said.
The controller looked at 254 randomly selected items from the three departments and discovered that 115 could not be accounted for. While 56 of those items were later found, the remaining 59 - worth a total of about $940,000 - had still not been found by the time the report was published.
Among the missing items were two gas analyzers worth $250,000 that belong to the Bureau of Sanitation, and a $60,000 video recorder purchased by Information Technology, the audit found.
But Sanitation Director Enrique Zaldivar said both gas analyzers were actually being used at a city laboratory. Zaldivar blamed the problem on the two systems his department uses to track purchases, and said efforts are under way to align them.
While the city has a policy of conducting inventories every two years, the audit found that the departments are five to seven years behind that schedule.
The audit also found that Information Technology and Recreation and Parks together have more than 100 pieces of equipment sitting idle in warehouses, including televisions sets, computer equipment and microwave ovens. Some of them were purchased more than seven years ago.
But Parks and Recreation General Manager Jon Kirk Mukri said many of the purchases were, in fact, being used.
"It's not as if we lost this material," Mukri told reporters. "We bought it in advance ... (and) most of that material is in the field right now."
Still, Mukri acknowledged the need to improve the inventory-control system in his department. "It's important to me because every $1 million we save is 17 employees," Mukri said.
Greuel said it was especially important to be vigilant in these tough economic times, when fraud and abuse is more likely because of reductions in oversight.
"It is more important than ever to ensure that every taxpayer dollar is spent and used effectively and efficiently," she said.
"In a city the size of Los Angeles, facing a $212 million deficit this fiscal year, tracing equipment is essential to maintaining control of the city's resources.
