A lunch conversation over the weekend with parties interested in City of Houston finances got me to thinking.....What's the Office of The City Controller doing lately?
The answer: Not much apparently.
In 2014 the City Controller has released 3 audit reports and one report of a compliance review. They have offered up an audit plan for 2014, but none of the 2014 audits have, according to the site, been completed as of yet. In fact, the rollover audits from 2013 (which included unfinished audits from 2011 and 2012 FY) has more items on it (Ten) than did the audit plan for 2013 (6 - not including past roll-forward items).
In fact, according to the Controller's website they have not issued and published an audit report since 11-26-2013, If you remember there was controversy surrounding the flurry of releases because of their proximity to the election.
It appears that those charges, hotly refuted by Controller Ronald Green at the time, might have had some merit since his office has released nothing since that date. It's also telling that the latest status update for departmental project is dated 12/31/2013. This means that it's been almost a year since Green's office has even updated their current status log.
As we move to 2015 there will be a fresh round of municipal elections and rumors are that Ronald Green is considering a run for Mayor. I'm guessing this means we'll finally get some audit reports and an updated status somewhere around October 2015?
Houston has a leadership problem. It also has a fiscal watchdog problem because right now there is no one minding the store. A City Controller who was performing their duties aggressively and completely would be on top of these audits and would not be continually adding to the roll-forward list. They would be weighing in on the coming Fiscal Apocalypse! in an educated manner and not just trying to work the angles for seemingly political purposes.
Maybe all of this is wrong and maybe the office of Controller Green really is doing a lot of work on audits. If so then they could divert a lot of this criticism by properly reporting results and statuses openly on their website.
Until then, the conclusion has to be made that they're not doing their job. This all goes back to leadership, where Houston is currently deficient.
