Sacramento Budget and Audit Committee Meeting - March 7, 2017
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Sacramento Budget and Audit Committee Meeting - March 7, 2017
The Sacramento Budget and Audit Committee met on March 7, 2017, at 2:00 p.m. in the City Hall Council Chamber. Mayor Darrell Steinberg chaired the meeting, with Members Angelique Ashby and Rick Jennings present; Member Jay Schenirer was absent. The committee unanimously approved the consent calendar and passed two discussion items, forwarding reports to the full City Council. Key topics included the City Auditor's audit plan and follow-up report, with emphasis on resource constraints and priority setting.
Consent Calendar
- Minutes Approval: Approved the minutes from the February 7, 2017 meeting.
- FY 2015/16 Single Audit Report: Accepted and forwarded to City Council.
- FY 2015/16 Sacramento City Employees' Retirement System Annual Financial Report: Accepted and forwarded to City Council.
- City Auditor's Activity Report (2nd Quarter FY 2016/17): Accepted and forwarded to City Council.
All consent items passed with a 3-0 vote (Ashby, Jennings, Steinberg).
Public Comments & Testimony
- No public comments were made during the meeting.
Discussion Items
- City Auditor's Proposed Audit Plan for FY 2017/18: City Auditor Jorge Oseguera presented the plan, developed through a citywide risk assessment and input from the Mayor, Council, and department directors. The plan moves forward three audits from the current year (Sacramento Police Department, Parks and Recreation, and Entertainment and Sports Center local hiring/business involvement phase two) and proposes five new audits (Fire Department Emergency Medical Services, Utilities Workplace Safety, Retiree Benefits, Boards and Commissions Ethnic and Gender Diversity, and Community Development Building Division).
- The discussion focused on the feasibility of completing the plan with existing resources. Mayor Steinberg and Councilmembers Ashby and Jennings emphasized the need to "right-size" the audit department, noting the same resource concerns have been raised year after year. Councilmember Ashby requested a prioritized timeline and clearer scope definitions for each audit.
- City Auditor's Recommendation Follow-Up Report (July 1, 2016 – December 31, 2016): The report tracks progress on over 400 audit recommendations. Highlights included the full implementation of all 39 recommendations from a previous Community Development audit, notable progress on the sexual harassment policy, and the Fire Department recognizing $1 million more than anticipated from implementing fire prevention recommendations. Concerns were raised about unfinished recommendations, including wireless devices, take-home vehicle policy, and narcotics inventory controls. Councilmember Jennings questioned the lack of timelines for implementation and suggested requiring departments to propose their own timelines.
Key Outcomes
- Consent Calendar: Approved unanimously (3-0).
- Discussion Item 5: Motion passed accepting the FY 2017/18 Audit Plan and forwarding it to City Council with direction to include tiered first-level priorities, time frames, scope details, and a discussion on right-sizing. Passed 3-0.
- Discussion Item 6: Motion passed accepting the Recommendation Follow-Up Report and forwarding to City Council. Passed 3-0.
- The committee requested that a report on staffing comparables with other cities be provided to support the right-sizing discussion.
- The meeting adjourned at 2:38 p.m.
Meeting Transcript
Good afternoon, everyone. The City Council's budget and audit committee will come to order. Let's call the roll and establish a quorum, please. Okay, we'll start with Member Ashby. Finally here. Sorry. And Shaneer. And Jennings. And Mayor Steinberg We do have a quorum. I know Councilmember Shaneer had uh uh another civic obligation here today, so um he he will not be here. Uh we have uh several items that should be relatively quick. Um let us begin with the consent calendar. Um are there any questions on the consent calendar? No, I have no changes, additions, or corrections to the consent calendar, items one through four, and we have no one signed up to speak. I'll make a motion. That's been moved and seconded. And all in favor say aye. Aye, opposed, abstain. That's a three to nothing vote, and it passes. Okay, let's go to the two discussion items. And um you know, I think we can consolidate these two. I I think we can. Uh, this is uh item five, the city auditors proposed audit plan for the next fiscal year. Um, and then the follow-up report from the pre-existing uh audits, uh the six-month uh update report. So let's take these together and we'll go from there. Mr. City Auditor, welcome. Thank you very much. Jorge Osaguera, your city auditor. Uh well, we'll go through both items, I guess. We have two motions, um, which will be consolidated into one, is to pass uh motion accepting the proposed audit plan for fiscal year 2017-18 and accepting the audit recommendation follow-up report for July 1st uh 2016 through December 31st, 2016, and to forward both reports to the full city council for final adoption. Um I was going to discuss uh briefly how we go about developing our audit plan if that's something that's of interest. I know several of the council members have already heard that, but if in the interest of time, we want to just dive right into the project. Okay, abridged version version. So with the audit plan, we try to be as objective and um uh fair as we can in developing which audits to propose for our next audit plan. So the technique that we use in developing what items we will put on the audit plan is to conduct a citywide risk assessment and to also solicit suggestions from the mayor, the council, department directors. Um we uh gather information from the city's financial information from the whistleblower hotline, and all of that information is uh then fed into our citywide risk assessment to identify those areas that we think have the highest potential for audit. Well, when you say fed into, what is that? A uh computer? Well, it's a spreadsheet, and we have uh weighted um numbers that allow us to distinguish some that are going to be higher risk than others, and uh those weights are adjusted based on whether an entity has been audited in the past, perhaps, then the the weight goes down. In the end, it's a numerical score. It's like it's like one of those health assessment tests, right? If you're one or one to seven, you're okay. Correct. Seven to fifteen reason for worry over fifteen. Yeah, we got problems. Yeah, big problems. Yeah. Okay. But that's just it's numerical.
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