Wednesday, Oct. 21, 1998 | 10:49 a.m.
Still reeling from backlash over the sudden firing last spring of Auditor Susan Toohey, a city committee struggled Tuesday with how much power the new internal inspector should have.
The city's Audit Oversight Committee intends to ask the 1999 Legislature for approval to amend the city charter, which now requires that the auditor report all findings to the city manager.
The bill to be requested of the Legislature would require the auditor to report to the committee, which is made up of Mayor Jan Laverty Jones, City Councilman Michael McDonald, a city employee and two residents from outside of government.
But exactly how the committee should handle whistle-blower requests for audits and what it should do with the findings of such reports is still up in the air.
"The idea that (an audit) shows up in the newspaper two weeks before the committee gets it could be harmful, not so much for the city, but for the individual," Jones said. "A good audit is going to produce mistakes."
Toohey was fired March 13 without explanation. Ironically, days before her firing she had requested a reorganization of city departments so that the auditor reports to a committee of private citizens and council members and not to the city manager, who has the power to fire the auditor.
After her firing, Toohey filed a $2.8 million wrongful-termination lawsuit alleging, in part, that a number of audit recommendations she made were not acted on promptly.
Jones said she did not want audits to become "a witchhunt to show how people are mismanaging their departments."
The auditor the city is looking to hire should therefore have experience in examining departmental operations in addition to budgetary skills, the committee agreed.
Jones said the upgraded job qualifications are worthy of an annual salary in the range of $80,000 to $90,000. Toohey was making $73,606 when she was fired.
Committee Chairman William Martin, president and chief executive officer of Pioneer Citizens Bank of Nevada, said a new job description should be ready for approval at a special meeting in about three weeks.
Philip Cheng, the city's interim auditor, and the audit committee itself will handle any requests for audits on an individual basis until a new auditor is hired.
"We want to be able to hand it off to that auditor and let him or her run from there," Martin said.
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