Auditors stay focused on tasks at hand
Interim City Auditor Margaret Krym said her profession is more akin to a religion than accounting; rarely does she or Kathy Magaw look to calculators for information, instead they compile data, conduct interviews, put feet on the street, so to speak, as they work within a particular scope of work for a particular purpose.
They adhere to a strict code that helps them find their way through their particular audits, and the results of their work, while they may prove or disprove various issues at hand, represent only what they set out to find within that scope.
Auditors can be vilified by other city staff, or used to further a political agenda.
But in the end, Krym said they’re only focusing on being a benefit to the city.
“Whatever the facts prove to be, that’s what the report will say, not what someone wants it be,” she added.
Krym and Magaw are the only two full-time auditors the city currently has.
At its limit, the office is normally staffed with three full-time auditors and one auditor who works “three quarter time”, along with an administrative person.
When former city auditor Dona Newman resigned last year, Krym was thrust into the role. But more importantly, the office lost another body.
With an ambitious, if not completely normal, annual audit plan ahead of them for FY 2011, Krym is resigning herself to the fact that some audits simply won’t be completed.
An assistant auditor, which was Krym’s prior title, can do three to four audits per year.
The FY audit plan had 34 audits scheduled, but the addition of the city’s fuel consumption bumped that number to 35.
After 120 or so hours put into the fuel audit, Krym turned the audit over the Clerk of the Courts Charlie Green’s office for their own take on city fuel, which could take up to 400 hours to complete.
Even with that help, Krym has little hope to complete the entire FY 2011 audit plan.
“It still leaves me with a bucket full of things, some of which I’ve already told myself won’t get done,” she said.
Each audit, regardless of the information being sought, begins with an intense planning session, which eventually leads to designing the scope and objective of the audit ahead.
Results are never made public until the final report is presented to city council — the auditor’s bosses — but the information is made available to upper city management, which makes comments, which are included with the final report.
The process is as important as the final report, Krym said, as each step is backed up with extensive documentation that allows the public, once made available, to follow the process as it unfolded for the auditors.
Doing so, Krym said, allows the auditor to provide the “highest sense” of the truth in the report.
“By the very nature of our profession, the one thing we have to offer, is integrity … our loyalty is to the method, not a political member,” Krym said.
Krym said Green’s office could be done with the fuel management audit before its allotted 400 hours.