Dear Friends and Neighbors,
As 2024 comes to an end, my office finds itself in the midst of writing reports about several important audits: the Department of Community Justice’s adult probation and parole audit, countywide equity audit, and Preschool for All audit. We are also finishing assessments about the status of recommendations from other audits, such as audits of the Joint Office of Homeless Services and Library.
For all of these projects, we connect with people most impacted by the area we are examining — particularly front-line staff and community members from historically under-resourced groups — to learn from their experiences and develop recommendations that draw on their knowledge to improve these programs.
Meanwhile, our Hotline Director is busy investigating complaints from community members about suspected fraud, waste, or abuse of position in county government. And others are contacting our Ombudsperson because they need her impartial help to resolve an issue with a county program.
The year may be drawing to a close, but our direct engagement with community members isn’t slowing down. For me and my team, it is a privilege to learn from our community and advocate for the county government improvements that people in our county want.
Thank you for being a part of this important work to promote an accountable, equitable government. It is my privilege to be your County Auditor!
Thank you, and best wishes for 2025,
Jennifer
Educating other auditor’s offices about culturally responsive community engagement
As a member of the Association of Local Government Auditors (ALGA), our office participates in sharing resources and best practices with hundreds of other local government auditor’s offices in the U.S. and Canada. This month, ALGA highlighted our office’s community engagement work in an ALGA Quarterly article titled Culturally Responsive Community Engagement. This article builds on information that Constituent Relations and DEI Engagement Specialist Raymond De Silva and Performance Auditor Mical Yohannes presented at ALGA’s national conference earlier this year. Raymond collaborated with Performance Auditor Michelle Greene for the article, in which they describe some ways that our office practices cultural responsiveness in community engagement activities — for performance audits and beyond. I’m hopeful that the path we are charting will inspire other local government auditors to foster a new approach to impactful, responsive community engagement.
Recommendation Status Evaluation: The county is still in the process of implementing the budget process audit recommendations
We report to you on the status of audit recommendations to support government accountability and transparency. We found that three of our four recommendations from our 2023 audit on the county’s budget process were in process.
These were improving transparency of reporting budget to actual expenditures at the foundational unit of the county's budget, which is the program offer level, to the Board of County Commissioners; engaging the community budget advisory committees earlier in the budget process; and studying whether the county should budget on an annual or biennial process. While there has been a lot of work in each of these areas, the Board of Commissioners, County Chair, and Budget Office are still working to fully implement each of these recommendations.
We found that one recommendation was not implemented as of the date of the report. This was a recommendation asking the Board of County Commissioners to develop a policy requiring departments to report to them when they intend to make expenditures in a way that the Board defines as materially different than how they proposed to spend the funds. Since the Budget Office put this recommendation on hold until they have an opportunity to study the impact of a new policy, we consider this recommendation not implemented. Operations & Audit Director Annamarie McNiel conducted the evaluation.
Community engagement
On December 6, Constituent Relations and DEI Engagement Specialist Raymond De Silva, County Ombudsperson Cheryl Taylor, and Ombudsperson Intake Specialist Kate Milne represented the office at Democracy in Action. This annual event at Central Catholic High School is an opportunity for our office to talk with high schoolers about how we serve the community and how they could explore careers in auditing, ombudsperson-work, and/or administrative and fraud investigations.
On December 7, County Ombudsperson Cheryl Taylor and Ombudsperson Intake Specialist Kate Milne participated in IRCO’s Winter Health Resource Fair. The following week, December 14, they tabled at The Community for Positive Aging, in the Hollywood neighborhood. They shared information in a variety of languages about how the ombudsperson can help community members who are having problems with county programs. Both were fun community spaces that we hope to be part of in the coming year too!
Left to right: County Ombudsperson Cheryl Taylor and Ombudsperson Intake Specialist Kate Milne, at IRCO’s 2024 Winter Health Resource Fair.