Chick Defends Tough Audit of Agency

City Controller Laura Chick defended her scathing audit of the Los Angeles airport department on Thursday, but did not answer the department’s countercharges that her review was inaccurate and based on factual errors.

Los Angeles World Airports released a strongly worded response to Chick’s audit on Wednesday, saying that the audit overstated by more than $13 million the amount of money the city had lost on leases at Van Nuys Airport and that it based some findings on a transaction that had never occurred.

On Thursday, Chick stood by the 51-page report produced for her office last month by Kurt Sjoberg, the state’s former auditor general, and his Sacramento-based firm, Sjoberg Evashenk.

“The airport’s defensive and reactive response to constructive help is extremely disappointing,” Chick said in a statement. “The audit is clear,” the statement also said. “There is an environment at the airport ripe for potential abuse and conflict of interest.”

Chick did not respond in her statement to the airport department’s specific arguments, and she declined The Times’ interview requests.

The controller said she would present her audit to the City Council and would ask an audit team to return to the airport department in December to “review their progress in implementing the audit’s recommendations.”

The audit found that the airport agency lacked a formal process for evaluating and selecting bids on lucrative contracts and did not keep adequate records documenting decisions to hire one firm, rather than another. It also found that the airport agency had lost $15.6 million from 1990 to 2003 by failing to renegotiate leases at Van Nuys Airport to reflect fair market value.

During the course of conducting the audit, Chick said she uncovered “potential illegal acts” and asked local, federal and state law enforcement officials to investigate. She has refused to elaborate on what these acts were or who was involved.

Chick met Thursday with a team from the inspector general’s office at the federal Department of Transportation to discuss the audit’s findings.