Los Angeles City Controller Wendy Greuel said she will be launching a comprehensive investigation of the city’s Building & Safety Dept.’s billing practices after she uncovered scores of incidents where customers were overcharged or undercharged.
Ms. Greuel’s latest audit uncovered several inconsistent billing practices.
Among them: Arbitrarily charging for permit fees when not required for projects valued under $500 and for charging an extra miscellaneous fee for projects requiring multiple permits.
This review is the latest in a series of actions taken by Ms. Greuel, a candidate for Mayor in the March primary, to investigate allegations of wrongdoing at Building & Safety.
This arrives on the heels of Ms. Greuel’s efforts to strengthen her Fraud, Waste and Abuse unit.
“People who do business with the city expect more and deserve better,” she said.
“As I reviewed the department’s management controls, it became clear there are several issues with how they collect fees. When everyone is struggling to get by, careless mistakes and overbillings are unacceptable.”
And then, strangely, there are the undercharged. The city does not always verify the reasonableness of estimated construction costs provided by customers in their permit applications. Since the estimates are the basis for calculating permit fees, misstatements in valuations result in inaccurate billing, potentially shortchanging the city on its share of permit fees.
Ms. Greuel’s audit found that the department does not always conduct required followup inspections to determine whether cited safety or building code violations have been corrected.
Of 7,900 outstanding “Orders to Comply” as of Dec. 31, 2011, 2,700, about one-third, were not inspected for a year or more.
Additionally, Ms. Greuel found the department often fails to issue Final Certificates of Occupancy in a timely manner. In an effort to streamline city government, her audit recommends that the city’s code enforcement activities be consolidated into a single department.
Ms. Greuel has conducted more than 60 audits. By her count, $150 million has been lost through wasteful spending and fraudulence.
Ms. Greuel may be contacted at http://controller.lacity.org/index.htm
