| (Nov. 11, 2020, 6:55 a.m.) -- City Auditor Laura Doud has quietly moved to seek City Council approval to destroy over 30 years of City Auditor office records.
The item, aggendized for the Nov. 17 City Council meeting by the City Clerk, says in an accompanying memo that the Clerk "worked with [the City Auditor office] to review the records destruction" and the "City Attorney and the City Auditor's Office concur" in the recommended destruction. It's not immediately clear who placed the item on the Council's Nov. 17 "consent calendar," a list of (unusually long for that meeting) of 48 items that the Council can approve without individual discussion in a single vote unless a Council member requests an item's separate discussion and a separate Council vote. The Auditor records slated for destruction are vaguely described as "working papers" (going back to 1986) and as "administrative files" (going back to 1987) along with some contract files. Most of the 56 boxes of documents of documents indicate "lists" [possibly showing the types of documents in each box] but the lists aren't not visible online. The documents slated for destruction may be inconsequential or may provide a treasure trove of information covering over three crucial decades in LB's history. The periods involved encompass the loss of Disney Sea, the exit to Signal Hill of many of LB's auto dealerships, the loss of the LB Naval shipyard, the loss/demolition of the Naval Station (demolished for a Port container facility), plans for the Aquarium (which hasn't performed as LB taxpayers were told), the "Queensway Bay Entertainment and Retail Project" (which didn't deliver a promised regional attraction), an LBPD "strategic plan" that included a "preliminary staffing strategy" to reach 1,024 officers by FY2000 (never delivered), years of city employee agreements that imposed generous pension costs on LB taxpayers, the notorious 2002 "pension spike" (that 2006 Mayoral candidates Doug Drummond and Bob Foster said left LB with "pension potholes"), and perhaps most telling: the Queen Mary in which years of operators/lessees were allowed to defer maintenance items that have now left LB taxpayers facing with millions in unbudgeted costs. Doud is the only remaining citywide LB elected in office for the Queen Mary operations period from mid-2006 to the present. [Scroll down for further.] |
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Shortly after Mayor Foster's election, Doud supported his proposal to modestly increase sums that incumbents could collect in LB-allowed "officeholder" accounts." (Allowing LB electeds to maintain "officeholder accounts" was denounced by critics from their mid-1990's inception as de facto "slush funds".) In 2015 and 2017, Doud remained publicly mum when a Council majority agreed to roughly triple annual amounts collectable in officeholder amounts (2015) and politically weaponized the accounts (2017) for use in electing others to political offices. (Mayor Garcia was the major beneficiary of this since his citywide officeholder account was roughly three times the size of Councilmembers.)
In 2018, Auditor Doud joined Mayor Garcia in supporting four Charter Amendments (AAA-DDD), one of which allowed Council incumbents and the Mayor to seek third terms but no further and erased LB's voter-enacted write-in requirement for third terms and beyond. (Doud portrayed BBB as "closing a loophole" that let incumbents continue to run.) Doud's stance on BBB angered a number veteran civic activists and led them to found LB's Reform Coalition..
Auditor Doud is technically independent but the Council sets her salary each year. The FY 20 budget (adopted by the Council in Sept. 2019) was the first budget following the November 2018 Measure BBB election. She received a $8,057 raise in FY20 from $219,429 to $227,486. In response to our inquiry, city management said Auditor Doud’s FY21 budgeted base salary is $234,383.23...and thus includes a not publicly visible raise of $6,897. Auditor Doud’s office replied that she "is planning to voluntarily participate in the furlough program in line with the city attorney’s recommending in a council item (agendized for the Sept. 8 council meeting) consistent with other city employees." Her office added: "The budgeted salary information is per the City’s Salary Resolution Section 16 which covers the salaries of all elected city officials and is based on the change in the Consumer Price Index."
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