Auditors of Sheriff’s Department to Get Help

Saying he wants to make sure the Sheriff’s Department is audited as quickly, thoroughly and independently as possible, Los Angeles County Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said Monday that he will seek private-sector fiscal experts to assist county auditors in their review.

At his weekly news briefing, Janssen said a comprehensive audit of Sheriff Sherman Block’s fiscal and management practices is essential after a Times series on problems within the department’s financial operations and the county’s lack of oversight of the sheriff.

“It is not in our interest to whitewash the sheriff, in terms of the good of government if you will, and the credibility of the county as an organization,” Janssen said in an interview after detailing his plans at the briefing. “I do think that if we do [the audit] inside and we have the involvement of the board and the sheriff as we go along that we will have recommendations for improvement.”

Block called for such an audit a week ago, saying he hopes that it will show his department is well-run.

Janssen said he is concerned about issues raised in The Times’ series earlier this month, including a lack of communication between county purchasing agents and sheriff’s officials, as well as executive perks, high-priced jail food and other suspect spending in the sheriff’s $1.1-billion annual budget.

Although he expressed confidence in the independence of the county auditor-controller’s office, Janssen said it has been hit too hard by budget and personnel cutbacks in recent years to do the job alone. He added that it is important for county auditors to take the lead because “by having people inside, that know the county, that know the issues and know how the systems are supposed to work, ideally by the time you are through . . . and have identified the issues, implementing them will be much easier.”

The Times reported that other counties, including Santa Clara and San Diego, have used outside auditors to recommend cost-saving changes in everything from management-to-staff ratios and overtime to which sheriff’s officials should get “company” cars and how food for inmates should be purchased and prepared. Janssen, the former chief administrative officer in San Diego, said efforts to implement some of those reform proposals were hampered by the county’s use of private-sector auditors.

County auditors “know the system, and know how it is supposed to work, and they are not going to be fooled as easily by the people they talk to,” Janssen said. Also, he said, sheriff’s officials will be more inclined to work with them than with private-sector fiscal experts “who could take months just to figure out what is supposed to be happening.”

“It isn’t just [Sheriff Block who needs to cooperate]; he doesn’t have the information,” Janssen said. “[He] can be very cooperative and have the thousands of people who work under him not be.”

County Auditor-Controller Alan T. Sasaki said in The Times series that Block has not wanted county auditors looking into his department. On Monday, Sasaki said, “We’re looking forward to going in and conducting an objective and independent audit. It’s been a long time since anybody has gone in and taken a look at key departments such as the sheriff.”

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State auditors also spent several months looking at the Sheriff’s Department as part of the state’s fiscal bailout of Los Angeles County last year. They are expected to release their findings later this week.

Janssen said he plans to use the county’s audit of the Sheriff’s Department as a “prototype” of reviews that he hopes will be conducted on all major county agencies. Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke has introduced a motion, to be heard at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting, that would give Sasaki the staff and the funds he would need to conduct such audits.

“These [audits] should be routine,” Janssen said. “They are a way to identify what is going right and what is not going right, and to make changes.”

Janssen said he hopes the sheriff’s audit will be completed in time to use its findings during budget deliberations next June.

“Obviously,” he said, “if you were going to do the entire department, it would take you a couple of years. We will first look at budget expenditures.”

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who was out of the country Monday, has suggested that outside auditors are needed to guarantee an aggressive review of the financial and management practices. “This is a hybrid that seems possible and desirable; people with inside knowledge and familiarity, and outside people with the manpower and resources to actually do the work, and to do a thorough and comprehensive job,” Yaroslavsky spokesman Joel Bellman said Monday.