Welcome back to "The People's Business." Today we have previews of tomorrow's Audit Committee meeting and Thursday's final meeting of the Budget Review Committee.

If you're interested in learning more about any of the items summarized here, just click on the agenda, then click on the item and check out the links to the staff report and background material over on the right side of the page.

Audit Committee -- Wednesday, May 20

This will be the first meeting of the City Council's Audit Committee since The Time Before -- Feb. 19, to be exact. So, what's up with the City's watchdogs? Here's what's up (agenda):

• Performance Audit of the City’s Strategic Human Capital Management: Interim City Auditor Kyle Elser and his team have been performing a series of audits of the City's workforce issues. This one evaluates the City’s efforts to collect, monitor, and analyze employee separation trends and compensation competitiveness. The audit found three main issues:
  
  
  
  • San Diego lags far behind other cities in compensation competitiveness.
  
  
  • The City can strengthen its efforts to monitor and communicate core metrics of its workforce.
  
  
  • The methodology of the City's Special Salary Adjustment process leads to undercounting of turnover, and the process for identifying positions at risk is inefficient and erratic.
  
  
  
  

The audit makes 14 recommendations to resolve these issues.

• Quarterly Fraud Hotline Activity Report: The City has a hotline for employees and residents to confidentially report suspected instances of fraud, abuse, or waste, and each quarter, the City Auditor provides a rundown of how these cases have been addressed. This is that.

Between January and March of 2020, 74 calls came in. Of those, 52 were deemed within the purview of the Fraud Hotline. Forty-two of those were referred to various City departments for investigation and 10 were investigated by the City Auditor. Meanwhile, 56 matters from previous quarters were still open as of Jan. 1, 2020, and in the three months that followed, 28 matters were resolved or closed. Of those, 20 were found to be unsubstantiated while eight were substantiated and corrective action was taken. In its presentation to the committee, the Auditor's office will detail the substantiated allegations and the actions taken.

• Hotline Report of Gifts Received by a City Employee: Back in 2015, the City Auditor received a Fraud Hotline report alleging fraud by a City employee. The case was subsequently investigated by the police, and no criminal charges were filed. Once the law-enforcement case was closed, the City Auditor reopened its own investigation based on information that could not be disclosed by the police while their investigation was ongoing. 

The Auditor will discuss the case with the Audit Committee. It centers on a City employee who received more than $3,000 in gifts from contractors that the employee managed. 

• Annual Report on Internal Financial Controls: Back in 2004, when the City had some issues with public disclosures of financial information, the City Council passed an ordinance requiring City management to annually evaluate the City's internal financial controls and submit a written report on that evaluation to the Audit Committee. This is that. The report's bottom line: Management concludes that the internal financial controls are A-OK.


• City Auditor’s Monthly Activity Report: Kind of speaks for itself. Happens at every Audit Committee meeting.

The meeting, chaired by Councilmember Scott Sherman, begins at 9 a.m. If you'd like to call in and comment on any of these items, follow these instructions.

Budget Review Committee -- Thursday, May 21

It all started when Mayor Kevin Faulconer released a draft budget.

Then the Budget Review Committee held a week's worth of department-by-department hearings.

Members of the public have had numerous opportunities to weigh in with their priorities.

Today, the Mayor releases his revised budget based on updated economic assumptions -- known far and wide as the May Revise.

And on Thursday, the Budget Review Committee (the City Council in disguise) will hold its final public hearing before the home stretch.

The agenda contains two items. One is a budget monitoring report on the third quarter of the current fiscal year. This report, which is done annually, gives committee members a rundown of how the City's actual revenues and expenditures from July 1, 2019, through March 31, 2020, compare with projections made when the budget was passed last June. This will be the first mid-year monitoring report that reveals the amount of revenue lost due to COVID-19.

The second item is a presentation from the Department of Finance on the Mayor's May Revise, which will inform the City Council members' final budget priorities ahead of their adoption of the budget, which is currently scheduled for June 8.

The meeting, chaired by Council President pro Tem Barbara Bry, starts at 2 p.m. This is the final chance for the public to comment on the budget before the June 8 meeting. Follow these instructions to call in and make your voice heard.

The Council is in legislative recess next week. The next regularly scheduled Council meeting will be June 2. As always, stay safe out there!

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