Friday, April 13, 2007
The auditor
With the tax deadline approaching, it's probably a bad day to place the word 'auditor' in a headline. But today we're talking about the state auditor, Brian Sonntag.
Sonntag, a Tacoma resident, came to a Lakewood Chamber of Commerce lunch recently to talk about performance audits. His office has been charged with doing comprehensive performance audits around the state (you can get more background about this new state direction by clicking here)
A performance audit reviews the staffing and productivity of government operations. The audit involves review and analysis by an impartial body that compares operations in one government agency to the operations of other government agencies.
Audits get the biggest headlines when they uncover waste or even embezzlement. But in general, an audit is supposed to fine-tune government. An audit is supposed to be a way for citizens to have more confidence in government.
I have an old friend in California - another former reporter - who does performance audits in the Bay Area. He surprised me by saying that a good chunk of the time, an audit determines that a government agency actually needs more people to do the job right.
There is a lot of potential for performance audits in Lakewood. Citizens often express curiousity about whether such-and-such department is either overstaffed or understaffed. Some people in town like to say they see waste; there are also those who say various departments don't have enough people to fulfill the mission of Lakewood. Sometimes it's the same people saying both things. It is not unusual to hear a given citizen say one department should have more staff, and another department have fewer staff.
Given that Lakewood is still a relatively new city, it would make sense for us to do more to instill public confidence and review our operations.
To be brief, Sonntag's message was that a performance audit is an enormous amount of work. Between his talk and discussions afterward with county staff who do audits, I learned that you cannot and should not just turn over a performance audit to an outside consultant who charged by the hour.
If Lakewood wants to do performance audits, the council would need to set up a special committee and put a lot of time and energy into the process. Given that our council has resisted the idea of subcommittees, it might not happen. But those of us in the room were grateful for what Sonntag shared with us about state audits, and were much better informed should they ever take place in Lakewood.
