An audit to form an opinion on the effectiveness of the agency in achieving those results would be a form of a special purpose perfomance audit that goes beyond the numbers.

In my view, a financial audit could be a proper role for the city controller, but a performance audit is an entirely different animal with different standards that would be better performed by a department specifically assigned and trained to do that.

But, frankly, I don’t think that either one can be issued with adequate assurance unless performed by outside, independent auditors.

The Daily Breeze, and the Daily News both got it wrong in the editorial you cite – which appeared in both papers.

Three points of note:

1. The City Attorney is not now using, and has not ever used, outside attorneys to sue the Controller. The matter is being handled in-house, by our own attorneys.

2. As is customarily done, the CAO’s office has assigned outside counsel from its CAO outside counsel conflicts panel to represent individual City employees targeted with subpoenas by the Controller. But for the action of the Controller, in subpoenaing City employees, there would be no money spent on outside Council.

3. With regard to oversight of this office, the Controller has conducted more than 20 financial audits of this office over the past 8 years, and we have passed each one with flying colors. Any suggestion that there is no oversight of this office or accounting of its spending is totally false. It is an effort to confuse the issue and the voters.

The Charter allows the Controller to conduct financial audits of other elected officials. The Charter does not, however, allow the Controller to conduct performance audits of other elected officials – which would allow one elected official to evaluate the performance of another elected official. The Charter reform commission correctly saw that evaluation as the job of the voters. They also recognized the potential for political mischief-making by a politician charged with evaluating the performance of other politicians.

That’s why the framers of our Charter chose not to grant the Controller the authority to conduct performance audits of other elected officials or their offices.

In your posting, you cite Erwin Chemerinsky’s view that the Controller does have this authority. But you fail to note that attorney and civic leader George Keiffer, the head of the appointed charter reform commission, Council Member Janice Hahn, who also served on the elected charter reform commission, as well as Council Members Huizar and Parks, agree with the City Attorney’s Office that the Controller lacks this authority. The transcripts, videotapes, and written reports generated during the charter reform process support the city attorney’s position on this issue as well.

The City Attorney welcomes a truly independent review of his workers’ comp attorneys, but not by an elected official with a political agenda and a history of playing politics with “official” audit results. Transparency is a given. The issue at hand is the credibility and motives of the reviewer, a politician.

Nick Velasquez
Director of Communications
Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office