Planning Commission Cautiously Approves Audit

By Oliver Lukacs
Staff Writer

August 24 -- A management audit of the Planning Department -- which has been criticized both for long delays and lack of enforcement -- inched a step closer to becoming reality last week after the Planning Commission voted 6 to 1 to send a formal finished letter of request to the City Council.

Spearheaded by former Commissioner Kelly Olsen, the call for an audit was opposed by his replacement, Commissioner Terry O’Day, who voted against the letter Wednesday because it fell “short of specifics.”

While the idea of auditing the department was initiated in June amidst allegations of corruption leveled by Olsen, the commissioners all gave more benign and benevolent reasons for supporting it. Providing specifics at this early phase in the process, the majority contended, could sabotage the goal of the audit by creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The audit, Commissioner Jay P. Johnson said, is called for because Santa Monica has undergone major changes during the past ten or 15 years that "make a world of difference."

“There is monumental development going on in the City," Johnson said. "There are millions and millions of dollars on the table on any one given project. Because the nature of our concern is so much more profound today than it was 10 or 15 years ago, it makes all the sense in the world.”

The audit, Johnson added, should be seen "as an evaluation process, a process that really looks into the nuts and bolts of how the gears turn and how we can, in effect, make a better flowing process… to improve service. It will make life somewhat easier for employees, but also for our customers."

“I see the performance audit as a health check, a perfectly natural routine piece of business," said Commissioner Geraldine Moyle, in her last meeting after resigning from the commission earlier this month. “I am not in favor of a performance audit on the basis of specific complaints or red flags.”

Targeting specific problems, Moyle said, would be missing the point. “I am interested in a clean bill of health on the cardiovascular system of our planning division, which is the largest division of our City’s government.”

Commissioner O’Day, however, questioned the practicality of the audit.

“The letter needs some work in its argument about the benefits and costs, and the evidence for why we need to do it, specifically what we’re asking the council to do,” O’Day said.

“It doesn’t address the costs, and the benefits are not very clearly laid out here. It doesn’t even raise some of the evidence that has led this commission to ask for this, and in any persuasive letter I think those would be the fundamental elements.”

Moyle responded that it is “premature to spell out” the cost or the scope of the audit “at this juncture.”

“I think we should be bringing in a diagnostic team. And just as I wouldn’t tell my doctor ahead of time, ‘I’ll accept this diagnosis but not that diagnosis,’ so we should not say at this juncture, 'You should find this you should find that,'” Moyle said.

But O’Day, who said he has provided management audits for businesses and non-profit organizations and has also had his own business put through an audit, pointed out the costly pitfalls of being too vague.

“One thing I’ve learned in that process is that open-ended concepts of what a consulting firm needs to do often ends up an open-ended, long-term very costly project, and that’s no fun for anybody,” said O'Day, who owns an LA-based electric vehicle rental company.

Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McKeown, the City Council liaison to the commission, pointed out that an audit would require funds from the City, which already has approved its annual budget.

“Whatever action is taken here obviously would require the budgeting of City funds, and we are in the middle of the year now,” McKeown said.

To get the funds in mid-year would take a minimum five votes on the council, as well as finding a funding source, “which is hard to imagine at this point,” McKeown said.

McKeown also questioned the wisdom of just dropping the letter in “someone’s mailbox.” He suggested that the commission schedule a dialogue session with the City Council to discuss the audit. The timing, he said, should “flow” into the budgetary process.