The audits coming from the office of City Controller Wendy Greuel these days paint a dismal picture of the city government’s ability to manage its finances. While this would be unacceptable in the best of economic times, it is particularly galling and painful at a time when city services – including public safety – are being curtailed in an effort to make ends meet.
The latest audit released this week found that mismanagement of workers compensation claims by the city was costing taxpayers millions of dollars. The audit — which former City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo tried to block by suing then-City Controller Laura Chick — found that failure to collect from third parties responsible for employee injuries may have cost the city more than $3 million each year. Another $1 to 2 million is potentially being lost through use of a practice of adjusting disability payments to mask errors committed by the Personnel Department, according to the audit. Finally, the audit found that it was taking on average more than five-and-a-half years to resolve cases.
This scathing audit came on the heels of another released in July for fiscal year 2008-09 that showed only 53 percent of some $553 million in city billings was collected, resulting in a loss of $260 million annually. Translation: The City is leaving $1 million on the table each and every business day.
City leaders are quick to look to city workers for easy fixes to the budget mess. Greuel’s audits suggest their time could be better spent collecting the money that is owed to the City and finding ways to fix wasteful business practices that rob the city treasury of desperately needed funds.
It is important to recognize that this important audit relied on the city controller receiving permission by the city attorney to conduct the review because it was housed in his office. When voters overwhelmingly approved charter reform in 1999, they gave sweeping new powers to the city controller to conduct performance audits over city programs.
Unfortunately a lone judge ruled that the city controller does not have the ability to audit taxpayer funded programs if they are housed within an elected official’s office. Surely the voters didn’t intend to let a politician’s door stop transparency and accountability
This issue is winding its way through the appeals process but could be easily settled by asking the voters to clarify the issue at the ballot box. Next March’s city election would be a good time to do this.
