B.C.’s first auditor general for local government has delayed a series of policing audits in Victoria, Port Alberni and four other cities by up to a year.
Basia Ruta, who took office in January 2013, had expected to release her first 18 audits by the end of last month. One set was to look at purchasing practices by local governments, while the other would examine how governments manage policing agreements and oversee police budgets.
Ruta’s office now admits that timeline was overly ambitious and required adjusting. The new schedule calls for the release of one of the purchasing audits within days and the remainder by Aug. 31.
The policing audits, however, could be pushed as late as March 2015.
Deputy auditor general Mark Tatchell said a number of factors led to the delay. The office had expected that local governments would take similar approaches to management, which would allow auditors to complete several reviews in tandem. Instead, he said, they discovered “local governments are more dissimilar than they are similar.”
In addition, auditors uncovered a “pressing issue” that required immediate attention and diverted resources, the office states in its most recent service plan. It did not say what the issue was.
Finally, the office also has decided to publish a series of online information booklets that will provide tools and advice to all local governments, rather than just the ones subject to audits.
Tatchell said the office has alerted local governments about the new audit schedule. “All local governments, including ourselves, think it’s important to get it right, get the audits done correctly and be comfortable with the process as opposed to rushing through them.”
Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin said the delay causes him no concern. He said the city’s new 10-year policing deal with Esquimalt already calls for an efficiency review.
“From our point of view, we’re doing the diligence that we need to do anyway,” he said.
Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins said it might be more useful to conduct the audit of the policing deal at a later date. “It was valuable information before because we were in limbo,” she said. “But now that we’ve worked this out and we have an agreement in place … I don’t know what the value [of an audit] will be. The timing is off, in my view.”
