Laura Doud addresses a Wrigley Association audience.
BY NICK DIAMANTIDES
Staff Writer
Making sure the city’s financial records are in order may not sound like a fun job to most people, but Laura Doud loves every minute of it. As Long Beach City Auditor, she has the authority to scrutinize the way every city department spends its money, and she constantly looks for ways to improve efficiencies and increase revenues.
On Monday night, Doud spoke to an audience of about 30 people who attended the monthly meeting of the Wrigley Association at the Veterans Park Recreation Center.
“The past few years of serving the community have been a real pleasure,” she said. “It totally agrees with my background, my interests and my love for Long Beach.”
She added that one of her overriding goals was to reach out to the public as city auditor. “It’s an elected position, but when I was running a few years ago it was really interesting to find out how many people did not know the city had an auditor or (what that job entails),” she said. “But it was important to me to let people know that the city does have an auditor, because the auditor reports to the public, and I work for you.”
Doud spent about 20 minutes describing what she and her staff do for the city. “First of all, it’s in the City Charter that we are mandated to do certain audits,” she said. “The main audit that we do every year is the comprehensive financial audit to ensure that the city’s books and records are recorded accurately and in compliance with generally accepted accounting principles.”
“On a quarterly basis, we also audit the city’s cash and investments. The city has approximately $1.7 million in cash and investments. We send out confirmations with outside depositories to ensure that the city cash and investments are accurate.”
The third Charter-mandated duty she described was the cash disbursements audit. “Every check that goes through the city is run through our office to ensure that the check is accurate, timely, has the proper authorization, and proper documentation and that we are not paying duplicate payments,” she explained.
Doud noted that in addition to the Charter requirements, her office oversees the collection and disbursement of Measure H revenues. That ballot measure, approved by two thirds of the voters in Long Beach about two years ago, raised the per-barrel oil tax imposed on oil well operators in the city. “This initiative requires an audit every year to ensure that the oil companies are paying the correct dollar amount and that the money is being used for public safety,” Doud explained. “This past year, the city collected $3.5 million in extra tax money because that initiative passed. We’ve been told that the money has been spent on 14 police officers, 14 firefighters and a fire truck, and we are preparing an audit to ensure that the revenues were spent for those purposes.”
The city auditor’s office also audits the Queen Mary. “It was in bankruptcy when I first came into office,” Doud said. “We monitored the bankruptcy proceedings and monitored it when it emerged from bankruptcy. We just completed an inventory on it to make sure all the city’s assets on the Queen Mary reconciled with the city’s books.” She added that her office is also beginning an audit to make sure that Save The Queen (the company that recently took over the ship’s operation) was undertaking the required capital improvements on the ship.
Doud’s office also recently revitalized the city’s fraud hotline, which is set up to receive reports of any company or individual that is defrauding the city in any way. “I want to make sure that all of your tax dollars are being spent efficiently,” Doud said.
In addition, her office audits the expenditures and inventories of the Long Beach Museum of Art. Doud noted that recent audits of the museum revealed discrepancies that city officials are now in the process of rectifying.
“One of the first audits that our office performed when I first took office in these very tough budget times was an audit of the police department,” Doud said. “In reality the police department is 45 percent of the general fund, and we thought, ‘If we are going to find efficiencies why don’t we start with the biggest piece of the pie?'”
She noted that the LBPD was very cooperative and in the last two years implemented the recommendations she had made. One of those involved transferring some sworn police officers from desk jobs to patrol jobs and hiring civilians to take the desk jobs. “That resulted in cost savings and having more officers on patrol,” she said. “Another one of our recommendations was to contain overtime.” Doud explained that LBPD administration, working with her office, devised a system of sharply reducing the overtime hours of sworn officers resulting in a $4-million-per-year reduction in overtime pay.
After her presentation, Doud fielded questions from the audience. Some of those in attendance complained of what they called the city’s mismanagement of funds and the constant increasing of fees, taxes, and parking ticket fines. Doud explained that while she can advise city management and the city council, she was not a policy maker and therefore had no authority to change the way the city operates.
“During these very hard economic times, we are all looking for every possible way to collect revenues owed to the city, to find efficiencies, and to cut fraud waste and abuse,” she said. To report suspected fraud against the City of Long Beach, phone (888) 372-8307.
