Silly performance audit bill attempts to deflect critics

by Lynn Harsh, Evergreen Freedom Foundation

It was a brilliant political move by Governor Locke and his colleagues to draft a pretend performance audit bill to hide behind for the remainder of the session. It is an extraordinary lack of courage of some in the minority party to send it happily on its way. And no doubt some lawmakers really think they did the right thing.

HB 2563 creates a new commission to oversee “independent performance audits” that will be conducted by the Office of Financial Management (OFM). What an irony! The same agency that creates the governor’s budget will also now audit it? So much for independence. I think this is commonly referred to as the fox guarding the henhouse.

As for conducting performance audits, as brilliant as the fiscal analysts might be at OFM, they are not trained to do comprehensive performance audits. Apparently this doesn’t matter since the people who wrote this bill changed the definition of performance audits to include agency self-assessments. Self-assessments have never been a legitimate performance measurement.

OFM estimates the new audit program will cost $2.5 million annually, plus the cost of an executive to run it.

Coincidentally, our independently elected state auditor does have staff trained to conduct comprehensive performance audits. Does a legitimate reason exist not to let them do their job?

Lynn Harsh is executive director for the Olympia-based Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

Contact: Lynn Harsh, Executive Director, (360) 956-3482

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org