Crystal_Cotti's Blog

Why did the City of Austin pay $300,000 for an outside audit of public safety departments? I started asking myself this question yesterday during the presentation of the results.

The first thing I noticed was city auditors were doing all the heavy lifting, not auditors from the firm MGT. This outside consulting company was paid $315,000 to review best practices, performance measures, staffing, overtime policies, police oversight and cost trends. One of the most important questions the city council wanted an answer to was whether consolidating airport police, park police, city marshals and APD made sense. To answer this question, MGT used outdated cost estimates and decided it would cost the city too much and accomplish too little. But even after new information became available, MGT did not update their research. You'd think $315,000 would at least buy you that.

Further, most of MGT's recommendations are already being implemented according to new Chief Art Acevedo. And the Austin City Council decided to consolidate before the audit was complete.

So, why would the council approve $315,000 for an audit they probably won't even use? The answer is simple, politics.