One less watchdog?

Didn’t it seem kind of fun at the time? Political throwdown, local style. Laura Chick, the elected city controller, wanted to examine the way workers’ comp functions were being handled by Rocky Delgadillo, the elected city attorney. She subpoenaed him, he sued her, they went at each other in the media, and their surrogates did battle on the City Council floor. Juicy stuff. By the way, who won?

This is Los Angeles, so all you need to know is that, as usual, the people lost. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark V. Mooney ruled earlier this week for Delgadillo, but in so doing he used language so broad that it could block future city controllers from conducting performance audits on a wide range of city programs and exposing misuse, or poor use, of taxpayer resources. The controller wasn’t simply ordered to keep her mitts off the city attorney’s office. She may also have to steer clear of programs under the purview of the city clerk, and certainly anything under the mayor’s control.

Delgadillo argued that if a city attorney or other elected official were doing a poor job managing a city program funded by taxpayers, the voters would act by punishing the wrongdoer with removal from office. That’s ridiculous. Voters too often won’t know about wrongdoing if they don’t have a representative with audit and subpoena powers. If the controller abuses her power and wages politically motivated warfare against a rival, that’s something voters can in fact identify and correct, by ousting the controller. Indeed, Delgadillo’s reelection stands as evidence that even the least capable public officials can escape strict scrutiny by Los Angeles voters.

The City Council backed up Delgadillo, not explicitly, but in its own council-like way, promising to mediate but hemming, hawing and trying to extract assurances that the controller would never try to probe its members. Thus the lawsuit. Now the controller’s power may have been diminished to a level even lower than where it was when Chick took office in 2001.

There’s a short-term remedy, and a more lasting one. Soon, as in next Wednesday, when Carmen Trutanich takes the oath as city attorney and Wendy Greuel is sworn in as controller, Trutanich can make good on his commitment to adopt an interpretation of the City Charter different from Delgadillo’s. He can stand by his invitation to Greuel to audit the office’s workers’ comp functions, and Greuel can stand by her promise to take him up on it. To really fix the problem, though, voters must clarify, once and for all, that they intend the controller to have wide-ranging powers to audit the performance of all city programs. The council should send them such a measure. But don’t hold your breath.