New city auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade plans to start a waste, fraud and corruption hotline for the city of Portland so that city employees and the public alike can call in on an anonymous basis. "Frankly we don't anticipate that there will be a lot of fraud, if any," says Valade. "But it's good to have this process in place, particularly because there is all this money coming down the pipe."

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VALADE: INSTITUTING HOTLINE TO PREVENT CORRUPTION OF WHICH THERE IS MORE, APPARENTLY, IN MIAMI...

The hotline ties in with city's receipt of Federal stimulus dollars—Portland has received $21million so far, and has requests in for a further $37million. There's also about $500million being spent on the city's own fast-tracking of construction projects announced back in January. Who's gonna notice a few hundred thousand, here and there?

Valade is currently receiving bids from three firms, and hopes to roll out the service some time in October. She instituted a similar service when she was auditor at Multnomah County—Valade took over from previous city auditor Gary Blackmer earlier this year.

"We didn't get a lot of reports, compared to some other jurisdictions particularly on the East Coast," says Valade, of the hotline she launched at the county. "And most were concerns about co-workers. But it was very useful for me as an auditor for identifying areas of risk that had not been known before."

Why is the East Coast more corrupt than the West Coast? "It's anecdotal," says Valade. "Based on conversations I've had with auditors in the public sector, the West is considered fairly squeaky clean by comparison. There are certainly some hot spots like Philadelphia and Miami, where corruption has been more accepted over the years."

You think Sonny Crockett could afford those outfits on a police bureau salary alone?

There are already similar hotlines at Metro, Portland's regional government agency, and the state.

"It will send a good message out to the folks in the city that there's a way to behave," says Valade, who expects the service to cost around $10,000 a year. "It's very inexpensive."