Results tagged “citycontroller”

This is local government at its finest, folks. Last year when then-City Countroller Laura Chick tried to audit then-City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, a lawsuit against Chick was brought forth. At issue? Chick wanted to audit the City Attorney's workers compensation program, but Delgadillo balked, throwing a lawsuit in the way. More broadly, the question being asked in the lawsuit, does the elected City Controller have the power to audit another elected official?

Thousands of rape kits still remain untested, finds a follow-up to a year-old audit that revealed some 7,500 rape kits sat untested on the shelves of LAPD labs. City Controller Wendy Greuel plans to release the the full findings tomorrow morning. Her office said today that the backlog has been reduced to 65%. However, Greuel says the Department’s record keeping is inconsistent, making it difficult to give entirely accurate numbers. In early October, it was reported that 3,157 kits were left to go with the full backlog completion due in the summer of 2011.

Last year, then-City Controller Laura Chick wanted to do a performance audit on then-City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's office. Delgadillo successfully blocked it with a court order, but the fall out over private attorney fees for Chick, totalling $200,000, has lingered. The most recent tentative court ruling was pushed yesterday another month so Greuel and Trutanich can work things out.

City Controller Wendy Greuel is expected to release her second audit since entering office last July later today. According to her office, a wastewater disposal contractor took advantage of the city's lack of oversight and a poorly written contract to overbill and overcharge.

City Controller Wendy Greuel's first audit, to be released tomorrow morning, will focus in on the city's convention center, which is said to have a $1 billion impact on the region each year. Former Controller Laura Chick, now keeping an eye on stimulus money spending statewide, always found the most ridiculous wasteful spending practices around city hall, garnering major headlines almost every time an audit was released. It will be interesting to see Greuel's results, but all signs point towards some solid findings. In a media advisory, her office hints towards opportunities to make things more efficient not taken by leadership, a lack of policy on fee waivers and lack of oversight on employee overtime, including one employee who made nearly twice their annual salary in overtime.

Just a week on the job and City Controller Wendy Greuel is kicking butt. The city's Emergency Management Department was charged with feeding some 3,200 officers that were deployed for the Michael Jackson memorial service in case the crowds outside the Staples Center grew, possibly to a million people.

In her inaugural speech as the City Controller, Wendy Greuel vowed to continue former Controller Laura Chick's quest to legally audit--financially or performance-wise--the offices of the Mayor, City Attorney and City Councilmembmers. Chick had tried to audit former City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's office, but he balked and the matter went to court where Chick lost. “If there is any question about this, I shall take this issue to you, the voters of the city of Los Angeles,” Greuel said yesterday. If you follow city politics, answer this question: if she fills the role just like Laura Chick did for the past eight years, will we be soon calling her Mayor Greuel?

"We've got a room full of people, all claiming to have been left out of the Bicycle Plan Update process. You can't call that the result of effective outreach!" That was Councilmember Wendy Greuel last Wednesday at the big bicycle transportation meeting chastising representatives from the Planning and Transportation Departments on not performing sufficient outreach for the now controversial bicycle plan. It looks like she has taken a cue from Laura Chick--that is, opining harshly, but telling it how it is--and is ready to become City Controller in July (let's keep that fire lit in her). .

"I want to have an aggressive agenda and hit the ground running," said Carmen Trutanich, who will become LA City Attorney on July 1st, to the Daily News. He plans to name a transition team and develop an agenda for his first 100 days in office. Not only that, he's opening his doors to Controller-Elect Wendy Greuel for a department audit, something current City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and former Controller Laura Chick sparred about. "I spoke to (Controller-elect) Wendy Greuel about having her come in to give me a base line on what we need to do. I will follow her with my own auditors to confirm with another set of eyes on what needs to be done."

Before she goes off to Sacramento to work under Schwarzenegger later this month, City Controller Laura Chick today released another scathing audit (.pdf) bringing to light another major city inefficiency. “There is no way that the City of Los Angeles can keep up with serving the needs of the people when it takes an average of 135 days (4 ½ months) and a minimum of a dozen steps to hire one person, and that’s just the reactionary part it takes to fill a vacancy. But anticipating public and workforce needs is not part of the picture,” she said in a statement. She goes on to describe that there is no strategy to efficiently hire new employees and that city hall insiders often get extra points on their applications just for serving the city the longest, even if they are not qualified.

It was rumored to be a simple swap. If Wendy Greuel won City Controller, which she did last night, City Controller Laura Chick would run for Greuel's empty seat in Council District 2 in the Valley. In an upset to many, Chick announced this morning that she is moving on from elected city politics.

On the upcoming March 3rd ballot, we will be voting for city councilmembers, the mayor, the city attorney and city controller candidates. The latter is one of the most unusual, but extremely important for government. The controller, who often has to take a pit bull stance, audits departments, and not just for their financial accounting but on their efficiency and productivity. Basically, are they serving the people in a timely, professional and efficient way while not going in the red?

"This is not the way it's supposed to work in LA nowadays," an unnamed source tells former Daily News Editor Ron Kaye, who broke the news that Nick Patsaouras, president of the DWP Board of Commissioners, will be running for City Controller. Considered a shoe-in for the job, Councilmember Wendy Greuel has already raised nearly $700,000 for her Office of the Controller campaign, according to the latest candidate filings. The Controller's Office is city's watchdog on spending and operations, however it has no power to enforce findings in audits. As important as the job is, it's also not a popular one with other councilmembers and city staff.

In light of ongoing news about the city's budget crisis (a predicted $295 million dollar deficit), information about the number of people employed by the city who earn more than $100,000 is not sitting well with some.

Problem: Los Angeles has a shortage of officers for its population and physical size. Budgets are tight, hiring freezes keep the department from hiring new civilian workers, forcing sworn officers to desk work rather than being out on the streets. Bottom line: the city is short 3,000 police officers to where Chief William Bratton would like it to be.