Let’s stick to the facts.

Over the past 7.5 years, the Office of the City Attorney has been subjected to 33 fiscal audits by the City Controller. That’s right, 33.

The majority of these audits fall under the Controller’s Internal Control Certification Program (ICCP) — a comprehensive audit of various components of our Office’s financial operations.

The ICCP provides Departments/Offices that successfully pass the audit with more flexibility and independence in the way they do business.

The ICCP is not a one time deal. The Controller reviews and scores the Departments’/Offices’ fiscal operations several times each year in follow-up audits.

If a Department does not pass, fiscal certification is taken away and more restrictive financial controls are put in place.

Prior to 2001, the Office of the City Attorney had failed its ICCP audits and had not achieved fiscal certification.

In 2002, under a new administration, the Office of the City Attorney became certified (passing the ICCP audit) and has maintained such certification since, passing every one of the many ICCP audits conducted in subsequent years.

The Controller’s Office has conducted the ICCP reviews/audits more than two dozen times over the last 7.5 years in the City Attorney’s Office alone. All data released by the Controller’s auditing staff is available upon request.

In addition to these ICCP audits, a petty cash audit, Dispute Resolution Program audit and Bank Account audit have been conducted as well, bringing the total number of audits to 33 over the past 7.5 years. 33 audits.

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

Chick seems to be partly relying on the public’s general distrust and dislike of Rocky to carry her case, but she’s produced very one-sided “audits” ticking off even those like Greig Smith, at great expense and so it’s beyond this personal issue between the two of them. (After her taking on Cardenas/ Hahn on the gang issue, they’re no friends either.)

They need to find a way to separate financial and more vaguely motivated audits — since Chick allegedly hired outside auditers we pay for anyway, maybe the city should just select outside auditers they mutually agree on when it’s not clear if it’s performance or financial. That seems to be what the council tried to get her to agree to, in how they tried to word the ballot initiative, but she said she’d write the argument against if it they put that on the ballot. That’s lost in the blame of the council for not putting the issue on the ballot, whatever their faults in delaying things. Maybe some of them did want to stall until she was almost out of office (with a May ballot initiative) but she’s not coming off very well either.

And suing the city/ taxpayers with a highpriced lawyer whose bill she’ll try to stick us with anyway, even though she was denied permission to hire a city-paid lawyer, is wrong-headed for the official who’s supposedly very concerned abut fiscal responsibility. Too bad there’s no outside mediator who wouldn’t cost much. Plus there’s the image problem: as you’re doubltless aware, L A has been named by some taxpayer watchdog group one of the top-six worst cities for excessive jury awards and city payouts.

Either Rob Wilcox is overreacting or I’m missing something, because I didn’t see anything from Velasquez that rises to a personal attack or mud-slinging. Wilcox should keep the debate on the issues and not make this a personality or character dispute. The facts would clear up those things.