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.”
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.”
Excellent. Will there be a way for the public to look at the complaints?
“I wish I was taller”
$10,000/year? For a telephone line and an answering machine?
What is the number? I need to call it and turn it in.
Matthew: I would assume that includes the labor hours spent setting it up, along with whatever database/ticket system they’re using to manage complains once they’ve been made, and the time of whomever must sit around and listen and followup on reports.
It will probably pay for itself many times over. Being cynical, I guess.
If Metro, state etc already have a similar hotline – couldn’t they just all use the same one? Is there really that much going on that it takes a whole room full of people waiting for the phone to ring?
For $10,000 a year, you aren’t going to get a whole roomful of people. Sounds like it would be a good idea to merge them all together, though.
Please, calls about waste and corruption when directed to city hall are all poo-poo’d and nothing is ever done about it. This is just feelgood waste of city dollars that won’t accomplish anything. Portland city government is corrupt to the core because we don’t have accountable city council members. All are elected at-large rather than from districts around the city. Only a very tiny segment of the city is represented in our local government because of it. Eventually, there will be a lawsuit over the lack of equal representation, and things will change. Until then, same old same old.