Results tagged “laurachick”

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?

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'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.

It probably wasn't very hard for former City Controller Laura Chick to leave her Los Angeles post early to join Schwarzenegger as his Inspector General overseeing how stimulus money was being spent in California. In Los Angeles, she was a bulldog over anything wasteful.

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?

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.

Watch out, Sacramento and local governments statewide! City Controller Laura Chick announced today she is leaving her Los Angeles post a few months early to become the "first-in-the-nation" Inspector General to oversee the use of federal economic stimulus funds given to the state and local municipalities. "I am coming to Sacramento to deter, detect and disclose any waste, fraud and abuse of these precious taxpayer dollars," she said in a prepared statement. She begins her new $175,000-a-year job on April 27th. Between then and July 1st when Controller-Elect Wendy Greuel takes office, Chick's top deputy, Rushmore Cervantes, will assume duties.

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.

As one side of the city deals with importing water, even as they face a possible water rationing situation, another deals with exporting the water. The City’s Bureau of Sanitation is in charge of wastewater, which is the focus of City Controller Laura Chick's most recent audit (.pdf) on performance and efficiency. As usual... "There are issues, however, uncovered in my audit regarding a lack of 21st Century business practices and efficiencies, which require attention." Among the problems she lists are broken equipment, outdated software and the lack of evaluation. Los Angeles has the largest sewer system in the nation with 6,500 miles of sewers carrying 450 million gallons of waste every day. A 2004 lawsuit settlement after torrential rains caused significant sewage overflowing gave the city 10 years to implement a program to reduce the flooding in future rainstorms.

$150 million in voter approved money toward animal shelters was the subject of the latest audit by City Controller Laura Chick today. Her letter to the Mayor and City Council wasn't as scathing as other audits (think about LAPD's rape-kit backlog audit), but she did reveal some problems:

The funny thing is, its City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo that is trying to stop accountability and transparency. He is suing to halt City Controller Laura Chick from auditing his office over how the city settles workers compensation cases, something that costs millions with lots of outside legal counsel hired.

Nearly 7,000 rape-kits sit on LAPD freezer shelves awaiting testing with at least 217 of those past the statute of limitations, rendering them useless even if a rapist is identified by the DNA collected. "It is beyond disturbing that the thousands of victims who have undergone the invasive ordeal of these 4-6 hour tests do not even know that their evidence is still untested" wrote City Controller Laura Chick in an audit of the police department's rape-kit testing program. "One of the audit's findings calls out a Penal Code provision that requires the LAPD to make this notification to victims; the LAPD does not do that now." The 25-page report can be read here (.pdf).

Two big news conferences are scheduled for Monday to present reports on the LAPD and not necessarily in a good light. First, at 11:00 a.m. on the steps of City Hall, City Controller Laura Chick will present her audit on the backlog of Forensic DNA rape-kits. It has been reported that their backlog is around 7,000 kits. That's thousands of chances to gather physical evidence and DNA that could help put criminals in jail. Chick's audit is expected to officially reaffirm those problems.

City Controller Laura Chick was scheduled to speak to the LA City Council today about her most recent report on the city not being as emergency and disaster prepared as it should be (.pdf). Following the earthquake, her office sent out this notice at 12:37 p.m,:

It's always interesting to see public officials speak on the same subject and then put their words back to back. Last week LA Weekly published an article by David Ferrell taking aim at Villaraigosa's garbage tax. At issue, the garbage tax that sold to the public was on the premise that it was purely going to building the LAPD's force. That ended up not being true. “I want it to go to the men and women in blue. I want to make sure ... that all the money generated by the trash fee ... is specifically for building our police force,” the mayor is quoted saying in the Weekly.

Only 102 of the 958 city buildings expected to get CFLs have installed the energy-efficient lightbulbs and City Controller Laura Chick is saying that the program is not going fast enough. So far, the city has replaced enough to save $1.5 million on the annual $27-million power bill. However, replacing the bulbs came at the price of $5 million, but costs are expected to be recovered over time with estimated savings of $6 million a year.

In the latest of bulldog audits by City Controller Laura Chick, she finds that the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services is "struggling to move forward." With an nearly a million dogs estimated in the city, the department only has 123,000 dogs licensed. "The largest source of revenue for the department is dog-license fees and, yet, the department tells us that it is not their top priority," quoted the Daily News.

Los Angeles City Controller Laura Chick is bringing up one of LAist's favorite topics: Los Angeles. The once City Councilwoman (and probably future City Councilwoman when she runs and probably wins) wanted Los Angeles to be tourist friendly and not just for tourists, but for residents.

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.

City Controller Laura Chick announced yesterday the results of an audit ordered on the construction of the 10-story police headquarters downtown, revealing that the costs on the project "have soared $150 million over projections" bringing the receipt to over $453 million, according to the Daily News.

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.

"You don't actually think they spend $20000.00 on a hammer, $30000.00 on a toilet seat do you?" ~ Independence Day Well, it's the difference between what the new LAPD headquarters currently under construction should cost and is costing. And City Controller Laura Chick, who is responsible for auditing city spending to find misuse, abuse and savings, is making headlines by putting departments city who oversee contracts and contractors themself on notice, starting with the...

Too many train crashes! Today saw the second Gold Line crash this month, this one being the worse of the two. The Blue Line was involved in a crash earlier this week as well as a Metrolink train yesterday. Tennie Pierce, the city firefighter who claims co-workers fed him dog food-laced spaghetti settled with city council today for $1.43 million dollars. Will it be a cozy night indoors as it rains outside? Yep. Pretty...

Photo by MAXIMUMSHOTS via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr

work for Rock Finally, a piece of the Pellicano story that's vaguely interesting: Chris Rock hired the dirty detective when a Hungarian model slapped Rock with a paternity claim. Later DNA tests would show that the kid was not his son (or daughter, we're just feeling Michael Jackson this morning). Rock's attorney says they didn't hire Pellicano to do anything illegal: "Let me put it like this: When you hire somebody to fix your TV, you don't necessarily think he's going to hook you up for free cable."

OK, can we just agree right now that Eric Garcetti is the coolest LA City Council President, like, ever? That's him on the red carpet — the one crouching down, taking the photo of other guests.

This post is like Lewis Black on Sometimes there are stories that slip through the cracks, big and small, around LA and we don't get to them during the week. Stories We Missed is here to catch them and bring them to you. Better late than never, right?

We're as stunned as Laura Chick at the news that the LA DWP -- the tidy acronym for "Department of Water and Power" -- was buying bottled water for its offices, even as it spent a half-million dollars to promote how safe and delicious its tap water is to drink. We love it when the LA Times does local news like this.

KPCC reports that former city councilman Marvin Braude has died. Braude was first elected to his post repping the 11th district in 1965, then won the next 7 elections, serving for 32 years. He worked to preserve the Santa Monica Mountains, siding with environmentalists over developers. We once heard (but can't prove right now -- bad google!) that he was such an avid bicyclist that he regularly rode his bike to work at the Council. Later he was an advisor to USC's Neighborhood Participation Project, and as recently as last month was giving his frank opinion about a political appointee: "he's a kvetch and a nuisance." We didn't even know him and we'll miss him.