Controller Ron Galperin said work will resume on a stalled audit of a pair of a trusts that received over $40 million for more than a decade from the Department of Water and Power.
The audit of the Joint Safety Institute and the Joint Training Institute began in December, but was halted “shortly thereafter” when auditors were “prevented from accessing certain documents they need to complete their audit,” forcing the controller and the trusts the enter into dispute resolution.
Galperin said Friday he was “happy to report that (auditors) are again proceeding with the audit and will be in there next week to complete their work.”
The auditors “have been promised unfettered access to the documents and other materials needed to complete their work by later this spring,” Galperin said.
He declined to give details about what caused the dispute and what was done to resolve it.
The Controller’s Office last year withheld DWP’s annual $4 million in payments to the two trusts. The auditors have 120 days to perform the audit, and if they find no wrong-doing, the payment will be released to the trusts.
Lowell Goodman, spokesman for the Controller’s Office, said there has been no discussion of the next $4 million payment due to the trusts in July.
The audit was expected to be completed by the end of April, Goodman said.
In December, auditors began reviewing financial records kept in trailers in Sun Valley by the trusts after the Los Angeles City Council approved a deal with DWP union chief Brian D’Arcy in November that includes releasing the annual $4 million payment to the two trusts in exchange for access to half a decade of financial records.
D’Arcy, who heads the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 18, had refused to allow financial documents from the trusts — formed more than a decade ago to address DWP worker safety and training issues — to be audited by Galperin.
D’Arcy contended that Galperin did not have the legal right to subpoena records from the organizations, which D’Arcy said were independent from the city.
Galperin, in turn, refused to release the DWP’s annual $4 million payment to the trusts. The payments are part of a collective bargaining agreement with the DWP employee union.
—City News Service