Overseer of auditors to step down

Monday, Sept. 24, 2001 | 10:48 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A Nevada department head who has been dispatching legislative auditors since 1990 to ferret out inefficiency and wrongdoing in state government is retiring.

Gary Crews, head of the audit division of the Legislative Counsel Bureau for the past 11 years, is leaving as of Oct. 23 after 25 years with the agency.

The auditors took on such recent projects as detailing what went wrong in many of the state's computer projects, most of which were over-budget and overdue. The staff criticized the state Public Works Board, saying it didn't follow appropriate standards, leading to the major problems in the construction of the Lied Library at UNLV.

The auditors found the state agency that oversees the licensing and regulation of medical facilities failed to do timely inspections of nursing homes and to follow up on consumer complaints. A computer system in the state labor commissioner's office may have caused construction workers on public works projects in Las Vegas to be incorrectly paid, according to the auditors.

The division pointed out inequities such as sex offenders in state prison in Clark County having a better chance of getting paroled than similar inmates in Northern Nevada.

And the auditors said both the offices of Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa and state Controller Kathy Augustine were lax in processing cash transactions, which increased the risk the money could have been lost or stolen.

Crews, 55, estimated his staff saved the state $20 million in the last two years and $17 million in the biennium before that.

He said the division changed its focus in 1990 to get better results. Instead of tracking only the money, the auditors zeroed in on how the agency was performing its job and what improvements needed to be made.

No replacement has been named.

Crews quipped that many in state government will be happy to see him leave. But most agencies, he said, understand his staff is out to help them do a better job.