EDITORIAL: Hemet should welcome scrutiny

PRESS-ENTERPRISE EDITORIAL

On Jan. 13, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, a 14-member panel of the state Assembly and Senate, approved an audit of Hemet’s finances. The decision comes months after the city’s placement on the state auditor’s high-risk local government watch list. While both moves were resisted and challenged by Hemet officials, we believe bringing in a more objective set of eyes to the city’s finances is the right decision and encourage city leaders to welcome such reviews.

At last week’s hearing, State Auditor Elaine Howle laid out the rationale for pursuing an audit. Noting problems like Hemet’s high rate of turnover in city managers, budget deficits in eight of the past nine years and growing pension obligations and retiree health costs, Ms. Howle also raised questions about the city’s fairly optimistic fiscal projections.

“We have some concerns about some of the assumptions the city is using,” she said, skeptical about assumptions of no increases in staffing costs or capital improvements over the next five years.

Ms. Howle suggested looking into the city’s projections, options for reducing costs and assessing local economic factors and the effectiveness and efficiencies of city functions. Given the city’s exceptional struggle in aligning revenue and expenditures, such a review only seems appropriate.

Yet city officials have been less than enthused about state officials probing the city’s operations. Deputy City Manager Jessica Hurst explained to the audit committee that the city has already made a number of sacrifices – cutting city staff substantially since 2007 – and sensible reforms, like moving toward eliminating high-cost retiree health plans.

“We’d like to continue with the momentum we have built and ask that the city of Hemet not be audited at this time, but be given an opportunity to demonstrate the impact our actions have had on the financial stability of the city,” explained Ms. Hurst.

Councilwoman Linda Krupa echoed these sentiments, arguing that the attention that comes with being audited may make it difficult for the city to attract business and development.

While we understand such a sentiment, the city’s focus has been mostly skewed toward raising taxes or barely scraping by rather than engaging in a critical self-evaluation of how it delivers services to city residents. If the city is going to remain on a sustainable path going forward, it must have an objective picture of where it is and where it is headed.

As Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, told Ms. Krupa and Ms. Hurst, “In Riverside County, we want the city of Hemet to be successful beyond all of our wildest expectations, because your success is good for all the rest of us.”