L.A. Schools Will Tighten Audits After Alleged Thefts

The Los Angeles school district’s chief business and financial officer said Tuesday that, because of recent alleged thefts by supervisors and others on the district’s custodial staff, he will recommend tougher internal audits and requirements for sign-offs on deliveries.

Robert Booker, who also supervises the huge district’s auditing operations, said, however, that he is convinced that the reported thefts are an isolated phenomenon, and he called “irresponsible” suggestions by Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner that the school system’s inventory controls are inadequate.

“I am really quite proud of the fiscal controls in the district,” Booker said in an interview. “We are better than most places.”

He said he would not recommend that undercover personnel be placed in various school district departments on a routine basis. The use of such undercover agents has been discussed by the school board’s business committee.

6 on Paid Leave

At least six members of the Los Angeles district’s operations department, which is responsible for custodial work at the 700 school facilities, were placed on paid leave two weeks ago, including the director of operations, James L. Riley. The assistant director of operations, Melvin N. Tokunaga, was charged with embezzling public funds. Tokunaga is free on $50,000 bail and is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.

Under the direction of the Board of Education, Booker has organized a task force to review district financial procedures. It is scheduled to report back in the third week of January.

Booker indicated Tuesday, however, that he has already determined that only adjustments--not fundamental changes--are needed in what he called the “rigid controls” that are in place.

He said that if thefts did take place among the custodial staff, they had gone undetected for as long as they had only because the top people in the department had been involved.

‘Most Difficult Thing’

“Here you have a collusion of people,” he said. “It’s the most difficult thing you can conceive of, to have someone in a position of operational responsibility implicated. It’s difficult to detect, although, of course, in the end it will be detected.”

He added, “My intention is to expand our internal audit procedures, to provide more of an internal look and to include in particular the purchasing and operations branches. . . . And we will probably revise some of our internal document procedures, requiring more people to sign off.”

The district has 35 people assigned to auditing functions, Booker said. The district’s full-time staff numbers 57,000.