Wendy Greuel and I met this afternoon to talk about issues, audits and the challenges her office faces. Here’s a summary of what we covered.
We closed the loop on the CD2 race. Throughout the campaign, I insisted that Chris Essel was her surrogate. Wendy insisted she did not encourage her. By the way, in an interview I did with Chris during the campaign, she said Wendy had nothing to do with her decision to run. In any event, I told Wendy that it was a mistake for Chris to run and that she mishandled the forum questions regarding her prior lack of involvement in CD2.
We both agreed that Essel’s campaign was troubled from the start. Wendy acknowledged it invited much Monday morning quarterbacking.
We spent the better part of our meeting discussing audit processes. Risk assessment was the focus of our exchange. Our approaches are on the same page, but I tended to emphasize the evaluation of internal controls in as many departments as possible as the key. My belief is that sloppy internal controls not only expose the city to fraud and waste, but are indicative of general inefficiencies in operations. Wendy’s staff seem to prefer more comprehensive audits. It is arguable which is the better approach. I suggested we need the equivalent of a Sarbanes-Oxley Act to empower the Controller’s Office and add teeth to enforcing recommendations. We both agree that the Mayor needs to light a fire under his General Managers to either assure implementation of recommendations or compel departments to state the reasons for not doing so. We also agreed that blaming job losses from ERIP is not an acceptable excuse for ignoring findings.
The Controller’s Office will launch a website tracking completed audits and their status. I plan on linking to it and occasionally writing about them and the GM’s responses. It appears that the site is nearly complete.
Wendy will provide a summary of her department’s strategic audit objectives in the near future that I can post on this blog. Obviously, it will not tip the Controller’s hand with respect to specific departments. After all, the element of surprise is critical in some cases.
We briefly covered some of our earlier disagreements. Wendy recalled Measure S (the phone tax) was our first major difference.
It was a productive discussion and we plan on having more.
You describe your time spent with Wendy as though you are a third grader. Sure is a lot of time spent telling us what you told Wendy and a general overview about the meeting. It’s like a review of the meeting instead of an interview. Please improve.
It was a review of the meeting. It was not an interview. Wendy asked to meet and I felt it would be inappropriate to treat it as an interview out of respect for her. Still, I think I covered the most important points. I’ll have further discussions with her as time goes on, especially regarding audits.
Wendy told us that she was going to do a financial audit of the City’s finances. First on her list.
Where is it?
And how does she propose to close the Budget Gap for the next 4 years?
More to come on that subject.