City Controller Wendy Greuel has taken a look at the Los Angeles Police Department's approach to tackling a backlog of over 7,000 untested rape kits in recent months, and has found that there is much room for improvement in how the LAPD handles this kind of evidence. more ›

A new audit of the California foster care system has revealed that over 1,000 foster homes and facilities in the state match addresses on the state sex offender registry. This means that sex offenders are living and/or working in said foster care establishments. more ›

In August, about 120 guns were seized from the city's animal control officers and facilities as part of a department audit conducted by City Controller Wendy Greuel. Thursday, officials announced the audit determined that all of the department's weapons were accounted for, though there had been previous concerns some weapons had gone missing. more ›

City Controller Wendy Greuel isn't missing an opportunity to take a critical look at Los Angeles' emergency response plans after Hurricane Irene took most of the East Coast out of commission this weekend. She has announced an audit of L.A.'s current emergency disaster preparedness plans. more ›

As part of an audit being conducted by City Controller Wendy Greuel, about 120 weapons were confiscated from six City-run animal shelters yesterday. Although animal control officers are issued firearms, there is a concern that the weapons have not been properly inventoried, and some guns may have gone missing. more ›

Are animals being cared for in shelters run by L.A.'s Animal Services Department actually being stolen and sold for profit? It's possible, and City Controller Wendy Greuel has announced today her intention to conduct an audit aimed at uncovering just what is going on behind the scenes there. more ›

Deputy Mayor for Transportation Jaime de la Vega has his work cut out for him. Today Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa named de la Vega as his nominee for the Department of Transportation, according to CBS2. His first task: Help City Controller Wendy Greuel complete a full on audit of the seriously effed up department. more ›

City Controller Greuel released the second in a series audits of the LADOT parking citation process revealing massive oversights, missed revenue, questionable policies and special treatment, according to a statement from her office. more ›

City of Los Angeles employees managed to waste about $1M on cellphones, says City Controller Wendy Greuel in an audit released yesterday aimed at uncovering the spending habits of seven departments when it comes to cellular technology. Said Greuel of her findings: "My audit demonstrates that our technology policies need to keep pace with technology. Cellular phone service contracts are constantly evolving and we should not pay a penny more than we have to - ever." more ›

The City of Bell's financial troubles--namely the sky-high salaries of their top officials--were not unknown to their auditors, according to a review published today by State Controller John Chiang. In his quality-control review of the audits conducted by Bell's audit firm, Mayer Hoffman McCann (MHM), Chiang found that the auditor "appears to have been a rubberstamp rather than a responsible auditor committed to providing the public with the transparency and accountability that could have prevented the mismanagement of the City’s finances by Bell officials." more ›

Details of new audit today released by City Controller Wendy Greuel show that the Los Angeles Housing Department (LAHD) "does a very good job helping to build housing," but "they’re not good at collecting money," according to a release issued by the City Controller's office. Greuel's audit, part of an ongoing series of audits aimed at ensuring the city's funds are properly administered, looked at how more than $43 million in Special Revenue Funds are managed at the LAHD. more ›

How effective is Los Angeles' Photo Red Light Program? That's the question City Controller Wendy Greuel will be talking about at a press conference later this morning. The enforcement cameras, which record drivers who will eventually receive a ticket in the mail running red lights, are supposed to improve public safety by reducing accidents at the city's highest risk intersections. more ›

City Controller Wendy Greuel is at it again and tomorrow plans to release an audit detailing how the city's Department of Transportation wasted $855,000 and exceeded a contract by nearly $2.5 million. more ›

L.A. City Controller Wendy Gruel this afternoon teased the pending release of her audit on the city's gang reduction effort, saying that much progress has been made in the past two years, but over a half million dollars of taxpayer money dedicated to evaluating the program has not produced any results. Without that data, it's impossible to measure the success of the program, her office said. more ›

Tuesday was a big day for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The City Council approved a proposal to let homeowners water their lawns three times a week instead of two days a week while the utility's leadership skipped out on a meeting to discuss a report that accused the agency of lying. more ›

Following up on a 2005 audit that examined the time and efficiency the Los Angeles Planning Department handles land-use applications, City Controller Wendy Greuel was left disturbed. "Out of all of the audits I have done so far, this is among..." more ›

Los Angeles has the Office of the Controller, an elected position that is the city's fiscal and performance watchdog. If you're doing something wrong, you might be caught and called out publicly after an audit. A recent internal county audit finds that some Supervisors control policy decisions behind the scenes. That report, however, was not made publicly available and it took the LA Times some work to obtain it. "County officials initially declined to release the audit, but after extensive conversations with The Times, the report was released late Thursday," said the paper, which put up a blog post today in preview of a more in depth article on Sunday. more ›

When a City Controller does an audit, the results are usually scathing, finding millions in waste. Today, Wendy Greuel announced that an audit of purchasing controls within Los Angeles' Supply Management System (SMS), where $500 million is spent on goods, was "working well." She still, however, found a few loopholes: "126 City employees with SMS access rights have been terminated from the City, and more than 50 individuals have duplicate SMS user IDs," she pointed out, adding that "some employees share SMS User IDs." Both could leave the city susceptible to wasteful spending. more ›

City Controller Wendy Greuel is at it again and this morning released a report showing off more wasteful spending in the city. With over 40,000 phone lines totaling $7.2 million a year in phone calls, she looked at phone call policies and if there is proper oversight in the justification employees making calls. Some findings her office released in a teaser are as follows: more ›

An audit report of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has revealed massive amounts of overtime and disrespect for the rules that may have led to underperforming deputies, according to the LA Times via a county report. Key findings in the report include: more ›

An audit (.pdf) that examined just a portion of purchases made by the LAPD in the 2007-2008 fiscal year found problem after problem in how business is done, finds the LA Times. Policies on spending, hiring and tracking how money is spent is supposed to protect taxpayer money, but the report found that the best deals were not sought, millions in receipts could not be located, among various other problems. “Policies were inconsistently followed, loosely enforced, and, in one instance, bypassed altogether,” the report said. more ›

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. more ›

In her first audit since taking office as City Controller, Wendy Greuel this morning released findings about waste within the Los Angeles Convention Center. There's nothing catastrophic revealed in the audit, but it points out too many examples of lax oversight that cost taxpayers money. more ›

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. more ›

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. more ›

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? more ›

The County of Los Angeles has gone ahead and busted themselves. "This is government at its worst," Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky was quoted saying in the LA Times. "We have a problem, no question about it. But we are going to move quickly to fix it." The county started auditing themselves after they found over 300 unused lines at the now-closed Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. The $1.5 million number only totals what they've discovered so far and it could double when they finish with 16,000 useless lines. Any savings is good news, especially in this economy, but the County has a long way to go. The $22.8 billion budget has department heads trying to cut as much as 13%. more ›

$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: more ›

"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. more ›

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. more ›