Audit oversight panel has huge task ahead

Erin Neff

Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2000 | 10:32 a.m.

When the Audit Oversight Committee meets Wednesday for its first time in months, it will be inundated with new audit reports, candidates for the long-vacant city auditor position and potential changes in its practices.

Acting City Auditor Philip Cheng will release five audit reports detailing suggested operational changes and fiscal tightening in a variety of city departments.

The audit with the most potential impact examines Fire & Rescue Services and the lack of city scrutiny into its contract with American Medical Services to provide ambulance service.

Another audit notes the $280,000 in taxpayer money spent on the 1999 Las Vegas Corporate Challenge citywide athletic competition involving area businesses. Other audits recommend mostly operational controls at the Municipal Court, Information Technologies and the Leisure Services Department's Communities School program.

The specific findings of the internal audits could be the least of the committee's concerns.

Chairman William Martin, president of Pioneer Citizens Bank, said at the top of the committee's agenda will be the hiring of a full-time city auditor and procedural changes in the way audits are released.

"One of the complications is, I'd like the Audit Committee to look over the reports before they become public," Martin said. "Not filling the auditor position is holding up resolution of that."

The city has not had a full-time auditor since Susan Toohey was fired in March 1998 after she made public audits she claimed were kept quiet. Those "hidden audits" became controversial during the 1998 governor's race between Kenny Guinn and then-Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones.

Toohey later filed a $2.8 million wrongful termination suit, which has yet to be resolved.

The Audit Oversight Committee was established after Toohey's firing to bring stability to the city's internal audit function.

Last fall the committee had narrowed a list of potential candidates to replace Toohey and had a verbal acceptance from Steven Shepherd, city auditor in Garland, Texas.

But Shepherd backed out after being offered the job, and the city was again left to begin the search for one of its chief employees.