By: Richard Montenegro Brown | Original Article at pe.com
Online documents, draft audits and a reordered agenda help a City Hall under fire be more accountable
Beaumont City Councilman Lloyd White, as part of a committee on internal controls, got his first official look Thursday, July 16, at a financial audit that pointed to serious problems with spending practices by the city.
The public, however, had its opportunity to see the same draft more than a week earlier.
“In the past, the way it would have happened is, the community would never have been involved until it was brought to the council,” said White, who was elected last year as part of a changing of the guard on the Beaumont City Council along with Mike Lara and Mark Orozco.
As previously reported, the document delves into how officials tracked – or didn’t track – the flow of cash in and out of the city, highlighting a tenuous grasp on internal controls that were “fraught with risks of all types.” Commissioned by the council itself, accounting firm MGO Advisory Services was brought on several weeks ago to conduct the forensic audit in the wake of multiple investigations against the city by Riverside County District Attorney and the state Controller’s office.
Hiring MGO, city officials said, was just one in a number of steps that followed the seating of the new council in December aimed at restoring accountability and transparency between the public and City Hall.
“I think it’s important for our government to show respect to our community and being as transparent as possible is the best way to do that,” White explained, adding before being elected he was often on the opposite side of the dais calling for more accountability.
It all comes down to trust for Elizabeth Urtiaga, a 20-year city employee who was appointed acting city manager June 2. She took the position shortly after City Manager Alan Kapanicas was placed on paid leave following the start of the investigations into City Hall and Urban Logic, a longtime consulting firm that worked with the city.
“The more open we are and the more business we do in public, the more the public trusts government,” Urtiaga said Friday.
A number of the changes instituted within the city were initiated by the current council before news of the raid on City Hall broke April 22. Others were enacted by Utiaga after she took the helm of the day-to-day operations. The most significant changes occurred on the city’s website, beaumontcares.com. A transparency portal was established giving citizens real-time access to all manner of public documents and detailed financial data.
According to Urtiaga, OpenGov was made available to the public in January. Urtiaga actually began running point on integrating OpenGov onto the city’s website in September 2014 under Kapanicas.
“The system is to show the public where their money is coming in and where it is spent,” she said.
About a month later, Laserfiche went online. The $26,000 system enables the city to upload and grant full access to every public document available, including public records requests and email correspondence involving city officials, spending documents, even resumes and applications of prospective public employees. Anything, Urtiaga indicated, that is not protected by attorney-client privilege or personnel issues.
She concedes that not everything is online yet, as staff members are actively scanning in documents daily to catch up.
Since 2013, the city has been recording and uploading podcasts of every public City Council meeting as well as livestreaming meetings for members of the public unable to attend.
Yet even streaming had its issues with the way the agenda was laid out before Urtiaga reworked it. Urtiaga said she moved all consent items – the normally noncontroversial housekeeping items often approved by the council in one vote – to the rear of the agenda and the action items to the front of the meeting.
“We wanted the meat and potatoes of the agenda early on, so if John Doe citizen was interested in an item and wanted to watch it at home, it would happen early,” Urtiaga said.
For longtime critics of the city, such as Beaumont resident and founder of the dormant Beaumont Citizens for Responsible Growth, Judy Bingham, there is much room for improvement. Yet she acknowledges the city is trying in a way she has not seen before.
“I think they’ve done some good things. … The positive is putting up the Laserfiche transparency portal giving us access to documents we’ve never had before,” Bingham said Friday.
Bingham has been making public records requests from the city since 2005, and in previous years, getting documents “has been like pulling teeth,” she said.
“In the past it’s been very difficult,” Bingham said. “It has cost me lots of money.”
She credits the new blood on the City Council with helping change the culture. “The council is beginning to understand that their job is to serve the public.”
While the past might still come to haunt the city as investigations move forward, for Urtiaga, the past is just that.
“I can tell you that from June 2,” she said, referring to her appointment as acting city manager, “we are working very hard to bring trust and transparency to City Hall.”