Good morning.
Good morning, everybody. The Committee on Ethics and Government Oversight will now
come to order. We have one item on today's agenda, a subject matter hearing on the
Office of Inspector General's published 2026 audit and
program review plan and associated updates.
We will begin with a roll call to establish quorum.
Please note that your yes or present response will be deemed a yes vote when
this quorum call is used for reference vote for later items.
Chairman Martin is present, Vice Chair Hadden.
Alderwoman Lee. Alderman O'Shea.
Alderwoman Taylor. Alderwoman Tabaris. Alderman Taliaferro.
Alderman Waguespack. Alderman Sposato.
Alderwoman Nugent, we will get to momentarily. Alderman Vasquez. Alderman Riley.
Alderman Lawson.
Okay.
No non-committee members, so we have a quorum.
Alderwoman Nugent has requested remote participation via Rule 59.
Is there a motion to allow her to do so?
Alderwoman Lee so moves. All those in favor signify by saying aye.
All those opposed. In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.
Alderwoman Nugent is allowed to attend this committee meeting remotely.
At this time, we will begin public comment.
This period is set for 30 minutes, and out of respect for everyone's time,
each speaker is limited to three minutes of public comment.
We have three people who have signed up to provide this comment.
We will begin with Taiwan Sims, followed by Zoe Lee. Mr.
Sims, please start when you are ready.
Good morning. Good morning, committee. Good morning.
When I initially started here, I spoke in front
of Inspector General Witzberg, who is now
head of the Attorney General's office.
But I spoke to the fact that Maria Hadden here, who is my
alderwoman in my community where I was for 30 years, who ran me out
of my community, through
insidious means,
who was not paying attention. However,
this individual, her and Commander Kirstin at the 24th
District need to be inspected.
I was shot,
what, multiple times in my community, and even though I don't go to the hospital, I
was still shot in my community. I was attacked in my community only for
advocating for the youth that were shooting and killing each other.
And I guess in being a good voice, that's not necessary when there's an agenda
against a whole group of individuals.
And even though this sounds like a narrative that can come out of a
storybook, it's the reality for me.
It has been a reality for me for years now.
So much so that now I'm in court for case
23D79597 over at 555 West
Harrison,
and to no avail. Monday, I would've been in jail, so I wouldn't be making this
public comment. The 19th, I was attacked,
beat up by who I don't know,
sexually assaulted at the hospital, all of these different
things. To what? Impede
just a forward motion that's proper?
I don't know what to say, Maria, because right now I'm talking through a veneer,
but I'm so upset. I'm enraged because I have to be subject to this,
and she hasn't been inspected.
Why?
Why hasn't this woman been inspected?
I went with these individuals, Zoe, to
a protest, and then had to chase a young man down the street.
But she is giving way to whatever's taking place in East Rogers Park
to remove foundational Black Americans or show them as what?
Nothing.
And you can sit there and act as if you don't hear me or act as if you don't know
me, but I'm sure she's quite familiar with me, gentlemen
and Chairman.
And this individual, I'm begging that she is
inspectedfor unethical acts
against the community of Rogers Park, where she wants to make a
gayborhood.
No offense to gay people, but inclusion means including
everyone from all spectrums of life, not just ones
that live in your proclivity.
And she can act as if I'm against gay people. No, I'm not.
But I'm against corrupt people.
I'm definitely against that. Right, Mr. Lawson?
And even though she might think that, "Oh, he's not going to come back to Rogers
Park," I'm not. I wouldn't. Why would I?
This lady put a st-
Next we have Zoe Sims, followed by Kashawna
Hams. And apologies if I'm mispronouncing your name.
Zoe Lee.
Not Zoe Sims. Zoe Lee.
Inspector General Glockner,
been coming down here for three years.
My mother has been sending
complaints
to every inspector general since 2017.
I started in 2023 with Deborah Witzberg.
The 17th Ward alderman,
he let the City of Chicago
Buildings Department knock down the Sandpiper Lounge.
It was a 43-year-old business, private property,
deed was at the Chicago Land and Trust.
The City of Chicago Law Department left my mom
a voicemail and told her she had three options.
One of the options, she was surprised that alderman did
not contact them and give them some type of compensation,
and they go through the Chairman of Finance, who was Ed Burke at that
time.
They get $1.5 million a year, everybody in this
body, to take care of things like that.
To this day,
my mother has not received her compensation for them
knocking down private property, which is violation of the Fifth Amendment.
Also, Blighted Property Act 1947, 1949, if
they felt that this was blighted, this property was blighted.
Governor Pritzker was supposed to go to Kwame Ra-Ool, where we can never
find. But Deborah Witzberg is now the chief of staff over there, which makes no
sense. Anyway,
they're supposed to still condemn it
as it being
blighted. You're still supposed to compensate.
So we haven't got the compensation part.
And what the City of Chicago Buildings Department,
and then these no-good aldermen, like David Moore, who I
believe is on crack cocaine, and I
believe he's on it a lot. So that's why people
aren't getting things that they need in their community.
However,
he is supposed to make this right,
and he has not made this right. But all they do is go around and tell
people in our communities that they can knock our
buildings down because it's police powers.
They blame everything on the police, and they want the police
to take the fall for it. No, the city did it.
So I need you to investigate that. I have all the paperwork and
the voicemail. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Last we have Ms.
Hams.
Thank you, Alderman Matthew Martin. My name Quishawana Harris. Sorry about that.
Oh, Harris. My sincere apologies.
Yes. Hi to everyone here today. And
so I am the founder and executive director of the Chicago Shower
Association, a new initiative focused on sanitation for the
homeless, or just anyone experiencing hardship.
I am here today not only to present a solution, but to speak on the
importance of ethical responsibility, transparency,
accountability, and public health access.
The issue is Chicago is currently facing a
visible and invisible crisis. Thousands of individuals lack access to
basic hygiene services, something that directly impacts public
health safety and human dignity. Yet hygiene
access is not currently recognized or structured as a consistent public
service. This creates a critical gap in healthcare, an increase in
preventable illness,
and ultimately leads to higher healthcare costs for the city.
Access to hygiene services is not
just a
service issue, it is an ethical issue.
And it raises questions like who has access to basics care?
How are public resources being aligned?
And are we addressing the root of the problem, or are we just reacting to the
outcome? Ethical governments means ensuring that
essential human needs are met by being fair and
transparency and taking accountability for public health.
I ask for your support in acknowledging this ethical and ethical
interpretation. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Harris. That concludes our public comment.
The committee did receive one written comment, which was
sent to committee members via email.
Our first order of business is the Rule 45 report from May 2026, which
was also distributed to the committee via email.
Can I get a motion to approve this report? Alderman O'Shea so moves.
All those in favor signify by saying "aye." All those opposed?
In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.
We will now continue to the subject matter hearing portion of
this meeting with the Office of Inspector General and their
2026 audit and program review plan and associated
updates. I'd like to welcome for the first time to this committee, General
Glockner,
as well as Darwin Jones, the Deputy Inspector General for the Audit and Program
Review section. General Glockner will begin with a brief
presentation, and then we'll turn it over to questions for the committee.
General Glockner, up to you.
Great. Thanks very much,
Chairman Martin, and
happy to be back here so soon. SoHave been in the
role for just under three weeks now.
And what I wanted to do today was
really kind of talk about two things.
First, to give you what I understand is sort of the
traditional update in these sessions in terms of the work that
the Audit and Program Review Group has done over the past year, and
then talk about what's in the pipeline and what you can
expect to see the rest of the year. And then more
important from my perspective, to talk about
sort of what I see is the current state of the
audit program,
and
some initiatives that
Mr. Jones and I plan to undertake that I think will
affect the work that you see
as we move forward. So I'll start with
just a review of what we've done since Inspector General Witzberg
appeared before you last
June.
The
group has produced six audits, one advisory.
Advisories are not full audits, but they're reports that
summarize work that's been done on a topic.
And then two follow-up projects, and follow-up projects the team
typically does where there are outstanding recommendations
to ensure that
changes that have been committed to are being made.
And then we also have undertaken
significant work on a number of pending projects.
So through the end of the year, the team expects to complete
four additional audits,
three documents that we refer to internally as
explainers, which are not full audits, but they're meant
to set out the operations of
areas that are kind of operationally complex and of some
public interest, and then two more advisories.
So a fair amount of work
in the pipeline and on track for completion through the remainder of
the year. I'll briefly just kind of tick
through the audits that have been completed during
the past year. I think most of you will have had the opportunity
to read them as they were published.
I know some of them have been the topic of conversation. Mr.
Jones, who's intimately familiar with the work,
happy to answer questions about any of those.
But
the completed audits related to the management of outstanding debt,
and to the challenges that the decentralized and
somewhat fragmented approach to debt management
poses to collection and
sort of management of the debt
issues.
Another audit looked at the 311 service processes,
and some of the challenges there, particularly with respect to information
that's available to users of the service.
We looked at metered water billing and in particular,
instances where users would see substantial spikes in water
bills because of the financial disruption that that can
cause. And the work indicated that the spikes
were not
typically due to billing errors, that the
meters were
working, but that when errors occurred, there was not a strong
user-friendly process for
resolving those.
And then another audit was
released recently looked at
COFA, the Office of Financial Analysis for the City Council,
and noted that it has not been able to consistently
provide independent financial analysis to support the City Council's
work.
It has challenges with access to city data,
and has limited resources to do the analysis that the municipal
code requires of it.
And then the last
two audits completed over the past year
related to the fire department's
inspection and testing mandates,
and found that the fire department doesn't
have the inventory of buildings that
require testing that would enable
it to complete those responsibilities in an effective way.
And the documentation of some of the inspection results is not complete.
And then the final audit related to the
Mental Health Equity Initiative,
and access to services,
and whether there's an opportunity
for better integration of
city-run and nonprofit-run mental health services
into a more cohesive network that would facilitate
access and
administration and data sharing.
The advisory issued this year
related to the
overtime payments to ineligible employees.
So this
essentially was a matching of city
employees and their FSLA status,
and collective bargaining agreement
status with payments,
and determined that there were
substantial overtime payments made over a four-year
period
to employees who don't appear eligible for overtime
payments.And then the follow-up audits,
or the follow-up work related to
an audit of the Chicago Fire Department's fire and
emergency medical response times, and then the
Department of Health's construction and demolition debris recycling
enforcement.
I'll pause there
just briefly before moving on to the work that's in
progress and ask if there are any questions relating to
the audits completed since Ms. Witzberg
was last here.
And before
any questions are asked, I want to acknowledge Alderman Deskes for purposes of
quorum. I do believe that most of these did
involve some substantial
discussion in the committee previously, especially 311 service and
outstanding debt.
But please, even if we want to ask similar questions, happy to have that.
Yeah, Alderman Lawson.
I guess, are there any updates on any of these from in the previous year or any
responses from any departments that are worth noting?
No, not quite yet. We do a follow-up
activity on each of ours, and we usually are informed, the
timing of that is informed by their response because we don't want to necessarily
follow up too soon when they laid out their plan was going to take a year
or is waiting for budget, whatever it may be.
So we don't have any on those particular ones.
But we do have them in the pipeline to follow up on.
Right. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you.
And in terms of the work that is currently in the pipeline
that we expect you'll see before the end of the year, there are
two
relatively
large scale
ones with the Streets and Sanitation
Department, one looking at rat abatement management across the
City of Chicago, and the other looking at the administration of
the auto pounds. And we are near completion with both
of those,
and going back and forth with Streets and San to make
sure that
we've got facts accurate and
discuss the plan and their
reaction.
We have another audit also near completion that has been
looking at the timeliness of payments to city vendors, which has
been, we know, a recurring issue.
A
particular focus of this work has been the quality of the data that is
available to evaluate the timeliness of
payments.
And then the last, this I think is a little bit behind the others in terms of
timing,
but also still on track for this year.
Compliance with the DTI's information security and
technology policy.
There are three explainers that we expect to finish.
One is looking at Chicago Fire Department
hiring and promotion practices and
documenting the demographic outcomes of those practices.
Another that was prompted by
inquiries that the office received, I think from city council and
others, is to look at the level of
resources required by the city for
the management and support of the new arrival
program and the accuracy of the city's reporting of the
costs associated with that.
And then the third is
the nature of the city's efforts to enforce
an ordinance from about five years ago
restricting rogue towing operations and to see essentially where
we are with that.
Advisories. There's one
that
relates to city council committee attendance and
reporting, and in particular to how
the council and committees manage and maintain quorums and
some of the related documentations and activities around those,
and checking consistency with City Council and Illinois Open
Meetings Act requirements.
And then
looking at the Chicago Community Catalyst Fund,
and whether essentially it's
accomplishing its objectives.
I'll note, and the point of this will become a little more
obvious as I go forward, but if you look at
the work that's in the pipeline for the rest of this year, if
we succeed in completing these projects by year-end,
the program will have published more audits, advisories, and
reports collectively in
2026 than in any year since the
program was initiated.
So,
that's great.
But that kind of takes me to
what I hope will be a little bit more interactive discussion,
which is what I see
as kind of the current state of the program, what I see as our
challenges, and how we think about managing those challenges
going forward to most
effectively serve the city.
So
there
really are two issues that we have
identified
within the program as priorities.
And these are things bothThat Darwin and
his team had identified through some work that they
did earlier this year, and things that stood out to
me when I did my own look at
the audit program as I prepared to take this role.
And the first is the need for a more
robust risk-based approach to
identifying the audit topics.
If you look at the topics that we
have audited,
particularly over the last several years,
it would be difficult to
correlate those audits with the city's most
significant risks.
And a good audit plan for an organization
should map in some meaningful degree to what the
organization's risks are.
And
we need to develop a process that
articulates what we see as the city's most
significant risks,
and then ensures that at least a meaningful portion of our
audit resources are pointed at those risks.
It can't and shouldn't be all of them.
There are always going to be things that are important to look at for reasons
other than it's a top risk of the city.
But our view is that more of our audit resources
should be going to the city's most significant
risks. We are-- Alder-
Yeah. Alderwoman Hadden.
Oh, and recognize Alderwoman Riley for purposes of quorum.
Thank you.
Thanks, Chair.
Since you offered this to be interactive, I'm like, "I'm going to ask the question
while I'm thinking about this."
I'm following where you're going with this.
I'm wondering, I know you've only been here three weeks,
what does it look like to build that process, right?
So in thinking about
conversations that oftentimes
I think of risks to the city, a lot of that comes down to
financial or legal risks, and I think about conversations that we've
had with court counsel and the law department.
And some of them have been around what could
we do better, I know they'd done some work looking at
tort claims, right? And
they'd had some conversations with alderpeople even just around process of what
happens from that ward level when we report, let's say,
a
sidewalk that needs repair or a street lamp. So I think about those things.
I think about lawsuits, police law settlements, right, are kind of
another huge area. But wondering,
that's from
our experience, right, which is fairly subjective.
So objectively, what does that process look like to help us determine
where our areas of risk are?
So,
I'll answer that with sort of two ways.
The first is we're building that process, so I can't
tell you exactly what it looks like.
I can tell you, so I built a similar process in
my last job for a corporation
that's different from the city, and the nature of the risks that the city
faces are different, but I think the process is similar in the
sense that you need to identify
the
activities, the financial risks,
the processes that have the potential to
most, and most significantly affect the largest number
of people. And to your point,
financial risk clearly
is important.
I expect that as part of our process, we will be looking at
where
the most money is that
goes
out through processes that
have potential vulnerabilities or that could be
changed. So to the lawsuit example,
one of the things I think we'll do is have a conversation with the law department
about
how much have they looked at this. Is that a
space where we could be additive? Would there be insurmountable
privilege problems with our doing work in that
space? Some of the things, and I think that's potentially a good
example, may not be good topics for
audits. But,
it's hard for me to imagine, for example, that we should
not be on a regular basis looking at aspects of our
procurement processes. We spend a tremendous amount of
money buying things. We know from the city's
history
that there have been challenges with that process in the past.
There were significant efforts to strengthen the process in the past.
What's the status of that work?
So I think that's an example of a space
where there are meaningful financial
risks that make sense for us to look at.
Another
kind of different sort of example,
where
I think it may make sense for us to take a look
is the
evolution of AI use in the
citySo who is using
it, and how
across the city?
What governance processes exist for AI
use,
and
who owns that? I think that's a project that if we take it on, we
would need almost certainly to do jointly with the law
department
and with the department of
IT. I think that's the right name. But those are
examples of the sorts of
things I think we would be thinking about.
As we
begin to identify risk
areas, part of our process will be to
pressure test those with members of the city
council, with city department heads, with the mayor's
office. Because
we're not going to get the most kind of complete and perceptive view of risks
kind of sitting in our offices and thinking really hard.
We need to make sure that the people who are actually living with and
managing these risks
are aligned.
And then once we have identified those, then
the
next step is to,
for each of those risks, think through in a systematic way,
are there things that we can audit?
Where have we done work in the past that is maybe
recent enough that it's not useful here?
Are there other groups that are looking at these areas and where maybe it
doesn't make sense for us to do? So for example,
EY looked at a lot of different operational areas
for efficiency and savings. And I
think one of the questions that we'll ask ourselves
in this process is,
if we're
tempted to look at any of those areas, what would we be doing that's
additive to the EY work?
So that's how we're thinking about the process.
But my goal is to
have that kind of built out by the end of the summer,
which I think is reasonable. We had our
first
in-depth discussion of the process with Darwin's
team yesterday.
Our goal
is not
a perfect bells and whistles risk
process because you can go down a lot of rabbit holes doing that,
but we want it
good enough that
we all can have confidence that we're putting our audit resources
toward places that matter.
Thank you.
Yeah. And two things I would add to that.
One, building out on some of what you said.
IT, I think in particular our system modernization,
HR, and how quickly we can onboard or just hire
and onboard people.
Right.
And then lastly, procurement, which you already mentioned.
That sits at the hub of what city government is able to do effectively or poorly,
and it spans departments.
Obviously, you could spend years, if not decades, on each one of those components.
But I do feel that those are through lines that
are not necessarily going to get a lot of attention, but if done better,
will speak to our ability to provide city services more effectively in
ways that people will see. And then secondly, I would
encourage the
program to consider polling or some other way to
collect sentiment in a data-driven way from community
members. Because from a risk mitigation standpoint, you can look at dollars
and cents, or you can look at the number of people who are impacted by a particular
service line, but that might not be the most important thing-
Right
... to particular people. And even if you decide to
politely disregard, like if someone says, "I want street sweeping
improved," or, "I want
the weed cutting program improved," because you feel based on your own
policies and priorities as you build that out, that that's not the best use of
time, it would still be, I think, a good thing for you all to consider.
Because I think you raised a good point of OIG might have some priorities,
but you might be losing some perspective by not talking with departments.
I think the same holds true for members of the public.
And
I agree that's an important point, and we need to kind of figure out the
right way to do that.
In the past, the OIG
did a fair amount of--
They would
try to interview people on L platforms and on the street
and
tables at park district meetings.
And having looked at some of the takeaway
from that,
it was not particularly insightful for the
resources that went to that. I think there needs to be a
better way of getting that public input and
potentially are there community groups that we can leverage?
Polling is maybe another approach.
Polling is more costly.
Of course. But maybe there's a foundation that-
Right
... would be willing to cover the cost of that, as they've done for a number of
things recently, like the workforce allocation study for the police department that
was covered by outside funders, in part to help avoid our
Byzantine procurement process. And I think that that was a
good use of private funds for a one-time thing.
Maybe similar considerations hold for OIG.
Yeah. No, I think it's an important
point, and
we will figure out sort of the right way to do that.
And the other thing to keep in mind
isThis is going to be an evolving
process, and you should be looking at your
risks each year.
And in the interests of kind of getting
started and keeping things moving,
do we do a lighter touch this year and a more in-depth
engagement the following year? Which kind of brings me to
the second point, which
is
reducing the time that it takes for us to
complete audits.
It takes on average about
two years or two years and change from the start of an
audit until publication. And we just can't work
that way.
And I've seen some of the
challenges that that poses in the back and forth with Streets and San
over the two audits that we've done,
the rat abatement audit and the telling.
And it's an example of in
a city where things are constantly changing,
programs are evolving,
you start your audit in year one, two years
later, things are different.
And
in order to be most impactful, we need to get
in,
do the work, and get out and report.
And
this is something that Darwin and his team are very sensitive
to. And we've talked a lot about things that we can
do to expedite the audit
process. And expediting that process
gives us a number of benefits. One is just important work
gets done and made available to the city earlier.
But two, it increases bandwidth.
So if you look at the
number of audits on the annual
plans that have been published in recent years,
they typically are in the low 20s. I think this year's
plan may be at 21 or 22. But if
the peak number of audit
products ever has been
in the high single digits, those plans are to a meaningful extent
hypothetical.
And
it's important as we build out audit
plans going forward, that they be
not just targeted to the right issues,
but that they
be achievable and that we articulate a
process for
prioritizing within the plan. So it's
common in developing an audit plan to
have some extra
audits in there if you move faster or something drops out.
But there should be a strong connection
between what you plan for and what you think you can accomplish,
and you should have a clear idea of what
comes first. And I think we've not been doing
a great job of articulating that and certainly haven't been transparent
about that
in our
own communications. So
just to give you kind of a sense of the
things that we are looking at in terms
of
how we will reduce some of these time
challenges.
It is a whole series of different things.
Part of it is looking at our internal
processes. We have a lot of processes that have kind of built up over
the years.
This transition is a logical point to step back and
ask, "Do we need all of them?
Do we need all of them as
elaborate as they are?"
We also think that if we do a better job of scoping
our audits at the outset,
we are less likely to discover partway through that there are
unanticipated issues. And it's kind of like planning a home
renovation.
The more carefully you think it through upfront, the less likely you
are to realize partway through that
you need to redesign.
Our
reports, we think, are longer than they need to be.
Many of our reports are 50, 60, 70 pages.
My experience has been that with each page past
about ten,
you're losing a certain percentage of your audience.
And we think we can make the reports
meaningful
but terser, and they take less time to write, and they'll be more
impactful.
We are exploring the creation of a process that
will let us do kind of short-form audits.
So that for things that don't require
or may not warrant a full-blown audit with all the
audit processes that professional standards require around it,
can we go in and sort of assess an area,
touch it,
become familiar with it
in a much shorter period of
time?Where we're still providing
meaningful output, but without consuming the same level
of resources. And those would be
projects where, in significant part, what we're trying to do is figure out, do we
need to do more work here?
Or to look at an area where we may not have significant
concerns, but it's an area that has been untouched
for a long time.
And then the other thing that is underway that I think will be
helpful is completing the installation of audit management
software. And so this was a
project that Darwin and Inspector General Witzberg
had initiated,
and will transition the program
off kind of Excel and manual
processes to a more modern audit
tracking process that will be much more
efficient.
So we think that by
being better about pointing our resources
at where
it really matters,
and by increasing the efficiency of our work,
we can significantly increase the
effectiveness of the program, its value to you.
My hope and expectation is that the program will
look very different by somewhere in the
early fourth quarter of the year.
And as we build out the program for
audits that we'll initiate kind of going forward, what
you're going to see is
a different focus.
You'll see more engagement from us on the front end
with you and other stakeholders,
including community members. And then you'll
see more
usable, more timely work product from us
going forward.
And
it's an important commitment,
but it's one that
we
intend to hold ourselves to, and we kind of hope and expect you will hold
us to that as well.
That's kind of all that we had, but
happy to take questions, thoughts.
Alderman Waguespack.
Thanks, Chairman, and welcome again, Inspector General.
Kind of happy that you're actually here now instead of showing up at budget
time, and that
being your first time to show up here might be more difficult.
So we're giving you a little head start here.
Appreciate it.
And
I might've missed it, I just stepped into the other committee, but
how will you be communicating with the City Council on,
for instance, the risk-based approach and the reduced time?
Are you going to do that
quarterly? Are you going to do it through briefings, or how
would you approach that?
I don't have a great answer, but would be happy to hear from
you what would work best. I mean, we could
reach out individually,
but there are a lot of you.
We could do briefings. I don't know.
Or these quarterly reports are fine, I think, if that's appropriate.
Yeah, we could.
The
quarterly report process
could work. I think our next quarterly report comes out
in mid-July.
And so then I assume we'd be back in front of you talking
about that relatively shortly
afterwards.
Yeah. Typically, we have held hearings that
include the most recently issued quarterly report.
So whether that ends up being in July or September, I think
that would be a good opportunity. And we can talk with you-
Right
... and Darwin and others on the team to see if July gives you enough time to share
updates on this, or if we want to hold that conversation to
September so that in addition to the quarterly report, we
can kind of work into these meetings moving
forward, the quarterly ones anyways, conversations around this important piece
around audits.
I think that would be great.
And obviously would welcome
input from you all, including you, Alderman Waguespack, on the right cadence and
the right level of information.
Sounds good.
Could I ask on a few of the audits, is that-
Please
... good? Okay.
Some more just in terms of
going a little bit
into what you were talking about. I know one of my colleagues maybe talked about
prioritization. When I look at some of these,
and you talk about two-plus years to do some of the audits, some
of them seem to me to be in need of a more timely
approach to them. For instance, when you mentioned the
26.5 million on the OT payments.
When I see something like that, I think that should be a six-month audit at
most. And on that one in particular, have you looked at a
clawback
provision that would be recommended to the council and say
26 million is pretty egregious in terms of
overtime that wasn't
appropriate? And that kind of leans into, yes,
we can do a lot of these efficiencies, but there it almost seems like we're looking
at fraud. Because when you're an official in
the city, you know what type of job you have, and you know there's certain
things that you don't take OT for, and certain things you
have to. So I don't know if there's a-In terms of this
approach to-
Mm
... prioritizing,
if we're kind of looking at those things where the monetary
value is
increasing much more proportionally than some other efficiency
aspect of something.
Yeah. If you don't mind, I'll take that one.
Again, Darwin Jones, deputy inspector general of the audit and program review
section.
So two points there. I completely agree with you that that should've been quicker
on that. That is one that
the inspector general here just spoke about, some that we can sort of get in, do
the work and get out, and not doing the full audit.
That's an example of something that we knew the problem existed.
Now let's get in there to prove up the why and the why it
matters-
Yeah
... and lay out some recommendations that are sort of obvious from cause.
And so there is an opportunity for us to improve.
It was basically a workload situation there.
However, we have intention to improve that.
Regarding a callback,
so
this is the thing about this particular subject, that 26.5
million, and we use the word potentially there purposely-
Mm. Yeah
... because there will be some that as
DOF and DHR, and then the departments where
these individuals work as well, all work together to shore up
the control environment, meaning why did this happen?
Sometimes it's a data issue in there where the departments
have the opportunity to change the FLSA
status that DHR had set,
basically. So the controls you have in place in your support
departments are not necessarily living in your
operational departments. So that disconnect there, it may,
once they start looking at this, it may be that, "Oh, you know what?
It's the support department's flag that needs to be corrected, and thus the
overtime," they would say, "In the future is warranted."
Okay.
That exercise has not been conducted and/or they're
in the middle of it now. I'm not sure the status. We'll follow up on this one.
But so to say that, I don't think that we're in a position to say there
should be a callback. I think we could say that in the city's
response to this, and as they push into the actual fix
to control the disconnect between the flag at the
control department or the support departments versus the operational
departments, that's where they should be considering for those that
remain, what should we do?
That doesn't mean that we couldn't look at that or have an opinion
about that.
But right now, I think it's more of a your primary
concern is what is right and what is wrong, and doing the
work to determine that.
Okay. Thank you. And I saw there was another audit you were looking at
too with the risk, and that I'm sure that's built in with the
apps that you want to
do for not just the audit tracking, but
every department looking at new data tracking
applications. Hopefully that'll help.
Moving over to one of the comments you made, Inspector General, was about
looking at community groups or going to the parks or something like that.
One example that we've been talking about recently, and this goes
to contracting. There's a lot of organizations out
there that are, say, the manufacturers or
subcontractors that deal with a lot of city contracting,
and
one of the things that we've had difficulty with is getting payments
to these subcontractors through our main
contractors.
And
I don't know if in your audit or looking at this that you've looked
at
one department that's done it correctly, I think, which was aviation, and that was
doing a direct pay or having an escrow type
agreement. But we have hundreds of subcontractors over the
years who have never been paid by the city on time.
They're waiting 180 days on average, sometimes much
longer,
to get that payment. And we're essentially knocking these businesses out of
business by forcing them to take lines of credit or other type
of borrowing at high interest rates to pay their workers or to pay their
suppliers. So I don't know if that was something that you could...
I think you're right. Going to a park and talking to somebody about it at the park,
that's honestly kind of useless when you could go to some
of these organizations and say, by the hundreds,
they have been experiencing poor management of these
systems by the city.
And really, those are the people I think we should be talking
to. And when you're doing the audits, reaching out to those groups and
saying,
"We have your data. We know who you are." So are we reaching out to
them versus just going out into the street and asking somebody who has no
relationship to that particular issue?
I don't know if you want to jump in on that, but I'm not saying you have to go to
those people, but they're the ones that we're essentially knocking out of business.
So maybe I'll start, and then Darwin, if you can maybe talk about the
specifics of the
prompt payment work that we're doing.
So I think you're right that there are these
other groups out there of affected individuals that we ought to be talking to.
I think that's a good example. Another one that I
think would be interesting and important to do is,
the city relies on nonprofits
in a significant way as partners to kind of leverage
and deliver
services across the city. And sitting down
with a cross-section of nonprofits to
understand sort of are there pain points in your dealings with the city?
What are they?
And then are there themes that emerge from that
that make sense to look at?
Yeah.
And then do
you want to talk to the subcontractor payment issue?
Yeah, if I could. A couple of things that you'll see,
and not to reveal right now because we're going to our quality assurance program,
but to give you a flavor of what you'll be seeing,
is that
the city, in good efforts, have tried multiple
programs to say, "How can we speed this up?" And so
we've looked at the various approaches,
and it's one thing to tout the approach, and again, in good
faith, trying to make that work.
I'm less confident, I'd say, that we know what the outcomes of those
are, and sometimes a pilot program then remains a
pilot program, and we don't know, okay, is it time to expand it or is it
time to stop it? Is it working or is it not working?
So that sort of analysis and reflection on what you're trying to
do, I think is something that the city can improve on.
So you'll see more in our report about
that. If I can be bold enough just to offer City Council a tip
here, is that oftentimes prompt payment and the
timeliness of payment comes up in various meetings, whether it's budget
time, whether it's at hearings, briefings, whatever it may be.
And we, in this report also, you'll see that we state
several times what those remarks are, and those will all give a different
picture of what the prompt payment timeliness is.
And it really depends on what the individual is talking about.
There's a process throughout that whole thing, and sometimes the comments are about
one particular section of that, like, a
particular department's timeliness is this, and that's what they're reporting on.
But it all sounds as if it's the full timeliness, and that's not what we're
finding to be the case. So from my point of view, the publicly
stated numbers and the stated numbers to council,
it really requires us to understand what numbers are reported to us.
Good.
Okay.
That's all I had for now, so I appreciate it.
And good luck on each one of those. Appreciate you both coming here today to speak.
Yeah.
Any other questions?
Alderman Lawson.
Alderman Waguespack took all the good questions, so thank you for that.
But I really appreciate what you said, Inspector General, about reaching out to
nonprofits. I just want to put a point on that, because a lot of these
folks are running on the thinnest of margins,
and it's social service providers, it's housing providers, it's people doing food,
it's people doing healthcare, it's our delegate agencies getting small businesses
open, right? And so that engagement with those people who are getting
paid real late is really, really important because I think a lot of this, and we've
talked. I appreciate everything you're saying because a lot of our conversations
are reflected in what we're seeing today, working across departments,
tackling the biggest fish first, and doing it in a timely way.
So I'll just say thank you for responding, and being sincere
in this work, and good luck.
We look forward to seeing you quarterly.
Oh, I did think,
if there's ever a need for us to meet
in a private briefing like we have to do for law settlement briefings or anything
like that, that's always an option for us as well, right?
Yes, there is.
So-
Yeah. OMA considerations aside, always happy to do that.
Right.
And I think
this committee is, most of the members, I think, would be both amenable
to that and would be a good cross-section of City Council.
So please don't hesitate to ask about that.
Great. Thank you, Chair.
Great.
Thanks.
Thank you.
One other piece I would mention, just because you had mentioned AI is something
that you all want to look into,
is I've poked around to see what other peer cities are doing with regard to
AI policy. Some of what they are doing is auditing consistently
the use of particular AI tools. So I just want you
all to be mindful of that, because maybe there are aspects of that where
OIG would be well positioned to perform some of those audit functions.
There might be ways in which that's not the highest and best use of your time,
whether it's a departmental function or even something that we require a
third-party vendor who is providing certain of these services to
do audits themselves and then to make them available in a public-facing way such
that we can kind of trust but verify.
Want to underscore, I think that's going to be very much needed in the coming
months and years. Yes, Alderman Waguespack.
But
I was just wondering if you had read through the Ernst & Young
EY report and what your take was on that.
Yes. I've read the whole thing.
I found it fascinating.
More than 60 or 70 pages, too.
Every page
worthwhile.
Yes.
So
overall, I thought it was really strong,
that it systematically looked at a number of
different areas and identified
potential opportunities for saving.
There are policy decisions that
are going to have to be made as to which of those make sense
to implement, and those are decisions that the
council and the mayor and the mayor's administration
will need to make. But in terms of just sort of a
piece of kind of audit work,
I thought it was strong.
And I also thought in some respects it--
I would have loved to see the OIG
being out in front in each of those areas.
Yeah.
So that's
the type of work that EY came in
and did is the sort of thing that I think we should be
doing routinely.And if we have a
really strong risk-based process, we would be
identifying areas like those
nine areas that EY looked at,
and then
kind of chomping through them over
a period of time.
Just following up on that, so there is potentially a second one on
the table, right? And if you look at other cities, a lot of other cities
have had this similar type of report done.
Milwaukee, Houston, you can go down the list.
Some of them did different departments or different agencies,
and then they sometimes did a second report.
Are you communicating to be able to kind of get in at the front of the
potentially second one?
So we have not communicated yet with EY.
I think that's something that would make sense-
Yeah
... to do.
And I know there's discussion about a second report, but
I'm not-
Yeah
... familiar with sort of what stage it's at.
Neither are we.
But
if they're going to do things, we don't want to duplicate them.
But are there things that they are looking
at, have looked at,
but
given their scope,
maybe they're not going to go as deeply
as would be helpful
to kind of really figure out
what operational directions to go in or
to inform policy
decisions that need to be made, and is that a place where we can be useful?
So,
that kind of big picture, I think that's really important
work, and we need to engage with it without
duplicating it.
Sounds good. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, Alderman.
Seeing no other questions, and there being no further business before the
committee, can I get a motion to adjourn? Alderman Esposito so moves.
All those in favor signify by saying aye.
All those opposed signify by saying no.
In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it. The meeting is adjourned.
Thank you all.