Will California’s auditor remain independent?

Criticizing the California Legislature is, to usage an aged saying, arsenic casual arsenic shooting food successful a barrel.

The Legislature wastes excessively overmuch clip connected trendy trivia, is excessively influenced by constrictive interests specified arsenic nationalist worker unions, and fails to grasp the economical and societal megatrends affecting Californians’ lives.

That said, the Legislature’s little than stellar tendencies are astatine slightest partially offset by its attraction of 2 invaluable agencies that springiness lawmakers and the larger nationalist autarkic accusation and advice, the Legislative Analyst’s Office and the State Auditor.

The LAO dives into the authorities budget’s ever-increasing scope and complexity, and presents its findings and proposal successful plain language. It’s a counterweight to the Department of Finance, which shapes the fund to the governmental priorities of the governor, and to extracurricular involvement groups.

The authorities auditor, meanwhile, delves into circumstantial areas of concern, peculiarly failings of authorities agencies and their programs, and the resulting reports of managerial shortcomings are often embarrassing to the governor. Additionally, the auditor keeps an oculus connected section governments, peculiarly the fiscal problems of cities, and besides monitors large trends with semipermanent antagonistic impacts connected the state.

Once appointed, the civilian servants who caput the 2 agencies run independently, if not autonomously, and they thin to stay successful their positions for comparatively agelong periods, sometimes decades. Gabe Petek, the existent legislative analyst, is lone the sixth idiosyncratic to clasp the presumption successful the 80 years since his bureau was created.

That longevity testifies to the Legislature’s hands-off cognition toward some agencies and allows them to instrumentality agelong views of issues, alternatively than crook to the prevailing governmental winds.

Periodically, of course, the agencies’ apical executives retire, giving the Capitol’s politicians an accidental to name successors. When that happens those who trust connected their autarkic probe and proposal wonderment whether the contented volition continue, oregon whether politicians volition prehend control.

Petek’s assignment successful 2018 continued the contented of independency but a caller trial of the contented looms due to the fact that Elaine Howle, the authorities auditor for the past 21 years, softly announced this week that she volition discontinue astatine the extremity of the year. While Howle has performed admirably from the onset of her tenure, the past fewer years person been peculiarly fruitful arsenic she and her unit delved into immoderate large managerial failures.

One was an astir unblemished grounds of failures successful the implementation of costly accusation exertion projects. But the astir spectacular was a meltdown successful the Employment Development Department arsenic it confronted a tidal question of applications for unemployment security benefits owed to the COVID-19-fueled recession.

Not lone were applications for life-sustaining benefits from abruptly jobless workers delayed for weeks and adjacent months, but the section paid retired tens of billions of dollars in fraudulent claims, immoderate of them to authorities situation inmates.

Ironically, oregon fittingly, arsenic Howle’s status was announced connected Monday, she appeared earlier a legislative committee for a proceeding into EDD’s failures — a proceeding that had been postponed respective times, seemingly to debar embarrassing Gov. Gavin Newsom arsenic helium faced a callback election.

Howle reminded legislators that her bureau had spotted EDD’s shortcomings during the 2007-09 recession and recommended improvements but thing was done and the operational problems popped up again, though much, overmuch worse.

The Legislature volition make a excavation of 3 imaginable successors to Howle and Newsom volition marque the last choice. Here’s hoping that they volition prime a worthy successor who volition support the office’s contented of telling it similar it is, not similar politicians privation it to be.

CalMatters is simply a nationalist involvement journalism task committed to explaining however California’s authorities Capitol works and wherefore it matters. For much stories by Dan Walters, spell to calmatters.org/commentary.