Voters last year made it clear they wanted the Office of Inspector General’s reach to expand out of City Hall and into constitutional offices and independent authorities.
There has not been much pushback since that additional oversight began Jan. 1 with the exception of the agency that faces the most complaints of the new group. That entity? JEA.
The publicly owned utility sought a legal opinion from city attorneys after receiving requests from the Office of Inspector General for access to facilities, personnel records and other information relating to an investigation being undertaken.
That opinion issued March 25, for now, backs the authority.
Before voters by a 55-45 split decided extra oversight was needed, a Memorandum of Understanding — commonly known as MOUs — was required for the inspector general to work with the additional agencies. That essentially was enforced by the voters last spring.
While the charter was updated to reflect the voters’ will, the portion of the Ethics Code dealing with MOUs was not — leaving interpretations for both the old and new requirements.
City ethics director Carla Miller told the seven-member Inspector General Selection and Retention Committee on Monday the clean-up language needed to be enacted as soon as possible. City Council will have to fix the issue.
It was just part of the group’s discussion, much of which focused on setting up performance metrics to determine how good a job the Office of Inspector General is doing.
The office was established in late 2014 to combat fraud, waste and abuse in government, which can lead to savings — although those savings and cost avoidances haven’t been as abundant lately as in the first several months.
Inspector General Tom Cline said there have been 13 complaints filed regarding the independent authorities and constitutional offices in the past six months, with five concerning JEA.
“I think they feel like they have a fairly robust internal audit and oversight department,” said Cline of the utility’s pushback.
Cline told the group his office has identified about $1 million in city money that was a mixture of money not properly managed or recovered.
He told the group several reports were expected to be released in the coming weeks.
Much of the work of an inspector general isn’t public until it’s completed, which can lead to discussions about how effective work is being done — conversations Cline said are prevalent at many levels of government.
Some activities, like improvements to policies and procedures and overall deterrence don’t have those dollars that represent savings. Others, like several cases referred to the State Attorney's Office, don't bear results right away.
“In theory, when people know someone is looking over their shoulder, they’re less inclined to do bad things,” said Cline.
He said he supports the committee’s decision to establish a performance evaluation process for his office.
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