Council OKs Oversight of Cell Phone Bills

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved a host of measures to control employees’ cellular telephone bills, which were shown by a series of Times articles to cost area taxpayers more than anywhere else in the nation.

The 11-point package is designed to increase oversight of phone use in a system where there was little accountability, leaving city officials unsure of which phone belonged to whom and whether calls were personal or business-related. In some cases, the city continued paying bills for cell phones that had been cloned, The Times articles showed.

“Prior to now you could not really determine if there were abuses because there were too few standards. Now we have a better system of accountability,” said Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose General Services and Information Technology Committee studied the issue. “There were significant oversight issues that needed to be addressed, and now they’re addressed.”

Among the policy changes the council approved Wednesday:

* Billing will be decentralized so each department will pay for its own cellular equipment and service.

* Employees will have to prove why they need a phone before one will be issued and will have clear guidelines for when the phones should be used.

* Each department head will review their employees’ current cellular phone usage to ensure it complies with the guidelines.

* The city will launch a new bidding process to find the cheapest cellular provider.

In addition, the city administrative officer will conduct a follow-up audit on the new policies and procedures in six months.

Prior to The Times’ articles in January, Los Angeles had virtually no system for monitoring individual phone bills, which sometimes rocketed as high as $1,000 a month.

The cell phone task force found that despite the huge aggregate bills, the city actually has a far lower percentage of its employees, 4%, using cellular phones than some jurisdictions, and that nearly three-quarters of the city’s phones are held by police, fire or other emergency personnel.