L.A. City Controller Laura Chick Reflects on Tenure; Advocates Improvements in Fiscal Oversight

After serving on the City Council of L.A., you were elected in 2001 by the voters of Los Angeles to be city controller, coincidentally, at the same time as the city's newly amended charter gave the controller's office additional powers. How would you describe your tenure as city controller? Of what are you most proud?

It's been an incredible seven-plus years. It is the perfect job for me, and I have enjoyed it even more than the time I spent on the City Council-and I thought that was also a really good job.

I'm most proud of putting the controller's office on the map as the eyes and ears of the public, the go-to place to find out what's really going on with City Hall and the public's money. The greatest frustration is that I don't feel that the changes I've helped to implement are necessarily enduring ones and I believe that there's so much more that needs to be done that isn't being done. It's not because it's rocket science, and it's not because there are financial obstacles; it's because the political, human will is not there.

TPR featured an October 2004 interview of you headlined, "Controller Chick's Audits Spotlight Inefficient L.A. City Practices," in which you answered a question about your responsibilities and ability to address fiscal oversight by saying: "The same charter that mandated the City Controller performance audits also took some authority, control and accountability away from the City Council and gave it to the Mayor, and particularly the proprietary departments such as airport, harbor and the DWP. The Mayor was given control over all management and commissions." You went on to comment on the inability of the City Council to play much of a role in fiscal oversight and thus relied on your audits to try and push through reform. Is that still the condition in 2008?

Yes.

What can we learn from your tenure under the new City Charter to make enduring changes in how city services are delivered and managed?

It takes constant scrutiny and oversight. The City Council, for instance, can't brush the dust off their hands and walk away after they've called, as an example, the general manager of the DWP to task on questions like, "Are there potential conflicts of interest with this hiree? Explain to us what you're doing." They need to keep doing those kinds of things. They can't just brush the dust off, walk away, and say, "We took care of that." Oversight is required all of the time, because otherwise you're handing over all your accountability.

I am in favor of a strong mayor, and I liked the charter reform in that it gave additional powers to the mayor's office. But I also believe in checks and balances, and the City Council is on a much shorter firing line, representing the public in their districts to guarantee good service. The City Council needs to play a constant oversight role upon those three proprietary departments through the council committees, which have oversight ability over those departments.

For example, Councilmember Jose Huizar started out the questions of DWP about the dollars spent on their low-income subsidy program and how they do outreach so that low-income households know about those discounts. That's a very key role for the councilmember to play. If no one is asking questions then no one has to answer to the public and things start to slide and glide.

With the changes in our media environment in metropolitan Los Angeles-the downsizing of the L.A. Times staff, the downsizing and sale of the L.A. Daily News building, and the electronic media doing less and less of a service in the way of news-who is holding our public servants in Los Angeles to account, other than you?

I am very worried. Changes in government, in rules, in regulations, in process, in how contracts are awarded, in how money is spent, and in how management decisions are made-if all of those things are happening out of the light of day, they start to get worse. It's part of human nature to settle and not push oneself all the time, unless there's reason to.

I'm at the end of my tenure as city controller. The person running for my office is basically running unopposed. That's great news for the candidate and very bad news for the public. The same thing goes for the mayor. They're basically being unchallenged. The incumbents for City Council are running for re-election unchallenged. That's worrisome. That, combined with the fact that we don't have vibrant, healthy, local newspapers that are energetically poking around City Hall and the Hall of Supervisors, writing about what's going on with the School Board, Metro, etc. That is bad news for the public, the voter, and the taxpayer.

As city controller of Los Angeles, you've done many audits over the years of city departments, agencies, and programs, including city disaster preparedness, DWP's program replacing light bulbs, city animal services, and LAPD. Of the audits your office has performed in the last year, which should our readers most especially focus on to appreciate your work?

All of the above, but let's do some prioritizing. First of all, the number one issue should be the disaster preparedness because you never know when you'll need it. We hear politicians at City Hall pounding their chests, saying we need more police. But being prepared, for instance, for a severe earthquake is an essential part of the experience of Los Angeles. Not surprisingly, our audit shows that government is reactive; government is myopic on anything long-term. It's not surprising to find that on something that takes strategic, advanced planning, we're not doing a good job.

I put the call out to the pubic to demand the best available free training that the city provides on preparing themselves in their own homes, communities, and businesses. The mayor and the City Council need to pull this city into shape in terms of the training, strategic planning, and coordination that the city government is strong enough to provide. Another glaring example: We don't have any kind of MOU or agreement with private sector non-profits-someone like Red Cross. I spoke to a high-ranking representative at Red Cross about a week after the audit came out and she said it was frustrating. They want to have this kind of relationship. They have free, state-of-the-art disaster preparedness training. They want to go out into the communities and give this training, and they would like the help of the city to coordinate for them to do that. Now, how outrageously dumb is it that we're not using existing resources?

One audit after the next finds that we don't have a plan. In every department, program, and corner that I look within the city, strategic plans do not exist. The city of L.A. is run without vision. If there is no vision, it's very difficult for each city department, much less the programs inside the departments, to have a clear sense of their mission-of what it is they're supposed to be accomplishing. Of course, if you don't have a vision, and you don't have a sense of your mission and what you're trying to achieve, you're certainly not going to have a strategic plan. If you don't have a strategic plan, you don't know where you're going or how you're going to get there. It's called groping in the dark.

It's not that we don't have the right talent in this city. It's not that we couldn't have a clear sense of what it is we want to do; it's that the leadership isn't taking us there. It's not what the leadership in this city is focused on, not in any comprehensive, strategic, understandable, clear, or coordinated way.

Given that city term limits will bring your tenure to close in 2009, you have the ability to speak candidly about the city and it's operations. There's a recent story entitled, "More Lioness than Chick," by Kerry Cavanaugh of the Daily News, which reads, "Never one to shy away from a bold statement, City Controller Laura Chick really let loose after the cameras stopped rolling Monday afternoon...The controller had been railing against City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's attempts to block her from conducting a performance audit on his workers' compensation program. Delgadillo filed a civil complaint against Chick on Monday." Can you talk about the reasons for your efforts and for this jurisdictional tussle with the city attorney?

As for the lawsuit that Delgadillo filed, he has pulled back, as he should have. He never should have filed it. What happened instead is a more direct, and I think a more appropriate, solution to this problem. The City Council is considering placing a charter amendment on the March ballot, asking the public to clarify their intent. I will be working very hard and very closely with the council and mayor to make sure that it uses the right language. It should be very simple: "Do you want dollars that are spent on programs inside elected officials' offices to be subject to performance audits?" Or, "Should programs in elected officials offices be exempted from performance audits conducted by the city controller?" The City Council might want to put language allowing the CAO's office or the mayor's office-which now has the power to do fiscal audits-to do performance audits of the controller's office. I'm fine with that, as a way to balance and check the concern that maybe a future controller will try to use his or her auditing ability in a targeted, negative political way. I feel there are protections against that, but if they want that added in, that's fine.

For the city attorney, first of all, to opine that the city controller can't do a performance audit of anything in his office is, to me, an outright conflict of interest. Secondly, he was extremely wrong-minded to interpret the charter, because it doesn't say that the controller can audit the city attorney's office that that means the controller can't. I think that the public wanted the city controller to audit anything and everything through which their public taxpayer dollars flow. This fight that I'm very energetically fighting is for future controllers and future taxpayers. This will not be something that impacts me as city controller.

What note will you leave in your desk when your term is up as Controller? What advice will you offer your successor?

The very most important thing is being able to stand very strong and firm about what you're going to look at and what you're going to say no to. There shouldn't be any sacred cows. In fact, sacred cows should be high on the list of things to look at. In the course of auditing you find that people you've known for a long time, within the city and out, people you've called friends, are somehow potentially involved in that audit. You need to have total amnesia, ignore that, and just keep going.

The city controller's role is very similar to that of raising children. You have to ask yourself, "What's in the real best interest of the public?" If either the perception or the reality of something is not in the best interest of the public, you have to say "no." The last piece of advice is to not worry too much if people don't like you when you play the "bad guy" role.

Lastly, the National Association of Social Workers recently named you as the public official of the year for what you've done in the controller's office, through the efforts to end gang violence, correct the city's failed approaches to the bank crisis, your work at UCLA to improve truancy, and your career in public service. Would you like to comment?

I've been an elected official for almost 16 years, so I've gotten a number of awards and plaques from wonderful organizations, but I have to say that this one has me floating a mile high because I'm very proud to be a social worker. Government and politics desperately need more social workers. If my getting this award brings attention to that, I would be thrilled. It makes me feel as though all the pieces of who I am have come together in this job. I'm very lucky for that.