Why wait so long to audit city expenses?

Charlotte City Manager Ron Carlee did the right thing when he orderd an audit of the city's travel and expense account outlays. Few abuses can do more damage to the reputation and credibility of a public official or public body than fraudulent expense accounts and extravagant travel spending. Just ask rising young GOP congressman Aaron Schock of Illinois, currently fending off reports that he used thousands in campaign donor and taxpayer funds for private airplane rides and other questionable uses, including a Katy Perry concert with his interns.

To the credit of the 27 top city executives and 10 lower-level but heavy traveling employees, Charlotte's audit didn't find much in the way of blatant abuses. Officials found improper expenses in just 3 percent of the $123,581 tallied by the employees in the 2013 budget year. "Not outrageous," Carlee called it, adding that many of the missteps stemmed from inattentiveness to detail. All the improperly disbursed money has been repaid.

Carlee, hired in 2013, said he conducted the audit because, as the new guy, he's charged with making sure the city is following best practices. Apparently, it had not been doing so on this front. He said that to his knowledge, such an audit had never been done. City Auditor Greg McDowell says he can't recall a full expense reimbursement or travel audit in his 17 years at his post. An audit of city-issued payment card spending had been done a few years ago, but McDowell said he couldn't speak to just how long it might have been since a broader audit like the latest one had been done.

That's concerning. This was just an audit of a handful of the city's 7,000 or so employees. Who knows what else would have been found in a broader sweep? McDowell says he sees more audits in the future.  "As City Auditor, I have committed to future audits of employee expenses on a regular basis," he said in an e-mail. "The City Manager and Council will likely expect (the) same; however, audit plans are developed annually. There are no policies or directives that require specific audits, or a timeframe."

Members of the City Council's governance and accountability committee seemed satisfied that the audit didn't uncover major problems. But if they want to make sure that continues to be the case, they should enact policies to require departmental or broader audits on some reasonably regular basis.

--Eric Frazier

Charlotte City Council takes an in-town road trip

You've been hard at work, day after day, trying to stay on top of the daily blizzard of to-dos. Getting the kids to soccer practice. Keeping the boss happy. Balancing the checkbook. Shopping for groceries. Walking the dog. Sometimes it feels like you're so busy doing things that you can't even remember if you're actually doing the right things.

So, every once in a while, you take a little time off from the daily grind, maybe think about those big-picture issues that get lost in the fog of everyday busy-ness. And suddenly, it feels like you've got a better handle on things.

Seems like that's where Charlotte's City Council found itself at the end of last week. The council members, on their annual planning retreat, spent Wednesday and Thursday doing bus tours of all the council districts, stopping at specific spots where district representatives could point out specific issues or projects. For instance, District 1 representative Patsy Kinsey showed council members the ongoing city-backed renovations at Mecklenburg Mills in NoDa. Here's a video the city produced from that stop:

After the tours, council members on Friday gushed about how much insight they'd gained by getting to see some of the city's key places, people and issues first-hand. Not surprisingly, the seven district representatives, who by design fight for their specific part of town, were among the most ebullient.

District 3 representative LaWana Mayfield thanked her colleagues for being open to learning more about specific challenges in the districts. "We won't always agree, but for me, this has been the best conference for our council retreats that I have been a part of to this point."

District 6's Kenny Smith agreed: "To see how we govern was an important part of this retreat for me ... when we're up at the dais and when we vote, I now have more insight into your thought patterns and hopefully you have more insight into my thought patterns. To me, this was just a great retreat."

To which one is tempted to say: You guys really ought to get out more often.

And it appears they will. Mayor Dan Clodfelter suggested they look for issues they can block out a couple of hours on specific days for "targeted mini-tours." That's a good idea. City Council members are part-time public servants, generally facing a blizzard of staff-generated reports and analysis on issues of the day. And since we elected them, not the staff, we need for them to actually know what they're talking about when they're sitting at that dais. They can get a much better sense of the city's needs by seeing things first-hand. Much better than say, sitting around a (high-priced) conference table in Pinehurst or Asheville, the typical hosts for planning retreats.

So, good for our City Council members. Here's hoping other local government leaders take notes.

--Eric Frazier