They’re at it again. Today’s Los Angeles Times (Jessica Garrison and Jeff Gottlieb, Bad City Finances Often Go Unflagged, Nov. 12, 2010, p. A1, at A16) reports that “Many cities that have been troubled by public corruption or mismanagement during the last decade – including San Diego, Compton and South Gate – got clean audits, even in cases in which public officials were sent to prison.”
We find this dispatch concerning the conduct of redevelopment agencies, embedded in the L.A. Times story to be of particular interest:
“There has been a widespread failure by auditors to make sure that cities are properly spending hundreds of millions of dollars in redevelopment money. Each year, about 100 of the state’s 391 municipal redevelopment agencies fail to file annual reports as required by law. Auditors are supposed to flag that failure as a major audit violation that can be followed up by the attorney general’s office, but auditors catch the problem in fewer than 20% of cases, according to a recent report from the state Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes.”