The DWP is, to use the inevitable pun, in a bit of hot water.
Wendy Greuel, the city controller, says there’s evidence that the DWP had no reason to raise its rates, and could easily have afforded a $73 million transfer to the city.
“At best, the DWP zealously overprotected its financial position. At worst the DWP attempted to extort the city council into paying its proposed ECAF increase…[and] unnecessarily plunged the DWP further into a financial crisis,” Greuel wrote in a letter.
LADWP General Manager Austin Beutner fired back, “Since my appointment just weeks ago as General Manager of the Department of Water and Power, I have made it clear we are moving forward, not looking back,” he said in a statement. “We’ve put in place a plan to reduce costs in this budget year by $263 million and we have shared this plan with the City Council, our customers, and the community. These cost savings will help reduce rates.”
All this comes less than a month after two employees were fired for drinking, driving and attending a strip club during the workday.
See the audit here:
Audit of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
Identification of economic activities for audit priority using management reports
The heads of audit offices in cooperation with the head of tax audit should have good knowledge of the economic activities which are continuously monitored by the assessment and collection inspectors. After making a preliminary analytical assessment, they should also use management reports in order to take into consideration the economic sectors and activities which require greater attention. In order to make this decision they should use multiple sources of information, other tax office sectors’ knowledge of businesses and most problematic activities in terms of hiding obligations. Finally, they should focus on the activities which demonstrate deviations from the average of the sectors in which they operate or repeated cases of non-declaration of their activities and tax obligations thereof.
Identification of high risk taxpayers using results from selection program based on IT system
Identification of high risk taxpayers and presentation of a monthly plan constitutes one of the most important steps in the analysis to assess hiding and avoidance by taxpayers. In fact, the entire audit process is a risk-based assessment process. However, identification of high risk areas in the audit plan has to do with general risk trends and audit potentials, in order to orient work in those areas where risk potentials are more probable and higher. In this identification process, the purpose of audit would not be oriented towards all risks, but, instead, it would focus on those risks and taxpayers which can have a decisive impact on the accomplishment of the objectives.remodel estimate