Audit Finds New City Equipment in Storage

The city of Los Angeles takes too long after it buys police cars and computers to put them to use, according to a critical audit released Thursday by city Controller Laura Chick.

Auditors for the controller did a surprise inventory of city warehouses in March after city employee unions claimed that millions of dollars in computers and other equipment were sitting in storage.

Chick’s auditors found 272 new motor vehicles, worth $11.4 million, in storage. Among them were 99 Los Angeles Police Department cars that were warehoused for four to 18 months after they were delivered.

In six cases, patrol cars were not protected and had been vandalized with graffiti. On average, auditors said new police vehicles were being held in storage for 215 days from the time they were delivered to the city.

“LAPD did not deploy newly acquired motor vehicles within a reasonable time frame,” the audit concluded.

With a large number of unused vehicles in storage, the audit warned, “the city may be purchasing more motor vehicles than actually needed or that it can put into productive use within a reasonable length of time.”

LAPD officials did not return calls for comment Thursday, but Police Department managers told the auditors that the vehicles needed to be outfitted with radios and other special equipment and they were short on staff to do the work, according to the report.

Chick’s recommendation to speed up the process for deploying vehicles also extended to other city agencies.

In one case, auditors found that a $197,000 Caterpillar tractor had been released for use by the warehouse in October 2003, but six months later the department that ordered it had still not picked it up.

Auditors also found $115,000 worth of computer components in storage, with dozens of monitors and CPUs in their original boxes. They included 17 monitors and five CPUs, worth $11,000, that were more than two years old.

More than 200 used computer components that were more than five years old were also found in warehouses. Auditors said they were now obsolete and should be sold for salvage.

“Computer component purchases and deployment are not being managed efficiently,” the audit concluded.

The city Information Technology Agency referred calls to the mayor’s office, where Deputy Mayor Doane Liu also blamed staffing shortages for delays in getting computer equipment installed. He said that the number of unused computers in storage was small compared with the 10,000 that were in use.

Liu dismissed the audit as an “observation” of problems that had since been fixed. “It is clear the controller’s office has no interest in improving the performance of those departments,” Liu said. “Otherwise, they would not have withheld this information for five months.”

Chick and Mayor James K. Hahn have been clashing recently, and Chick has rescinded her endorsement of Hahn for reelection.