Audits

Just days after he won the race for mayor, former NBA star Kevin Johnson seems increasingly likely to avoid criminal charges in an investigation of a nonprofit youth program he founded. U.S. Atty. McGregor Scott said Thursday that information provided by a federal auditor so far has fallen short of proving any criminal misconduct by Johnson or his nonprofit Hood Corps. But the mayor-elect isn't cleared just yet. A line-by-line audit of the nonprofit -- a training and mentoring program for disadvantaged youth -- is still being conducted by federal officials.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which is facing mounting pressure to account for its handling of DNA evidence from sex crimes, revealed Tuesday that it has a backlog of 4,727 untested sexual assault evidence kits in storage or its laboratory. Sheriff's Department officials informed the county Board of Supervisors that they are now auditing the unexamined kits to determine the status of each case.

Despite significant improvements over the last decade, facilities managed by Los Angeles World Airports continue to struggle with emergency response, regional coordination and the financial solvency of Van Nuys Airport, according to an audit released Tuesday.

Grossly incompetent bookkeeping that plagued the failed OnTrac rail project is making it difficult for Placentia officials to determine the financial health of the city, the new finance director for the city said Wednesday. Although Terrence Beaman said he had found no indication of accounting fraud by former or current officials, his downbeat assessment only underscored the city's difficult situation. Placentia is about $30 million in debt and faces a $2.

Caltrans is auditing $36 million in state funds given to Placentia's controversial OnTrac project -- the troubled rail plan that has pushed the northern Orange County city to the brink of bankruptcy. Department officials said they were reviewing OnTrac's funding to determine if it was properly spent. They declined to comment in detail, saying it was Caltrans policy not to discuss ongoing audits. The inquiry began in 2005. "They are looking at the whole thing," said City Councilman Russell J.

A nonprofit agency managing taxi operations at Los Angeles International Airport handed out cash to the managers of cab companies but could not document why. It paid employees who were allegedly injured on the job, but never filed required reports with the state. It paid tens of thousands of dollars to lawyers and contractors with no evidence that it got sufficient services in return.

City Controller Laura Chick released an audit Monday that found that a contractor, Cambridge Integrated Services, needs to improve its oversight of workers' compensation claims filed by the city's police and fire departments. Chick said that claims are taking longer to resolve and that the firm hasn't done a good job reining in workers' comp costs. Cambridge's contract pays it $7 million annually.

The Justice Department's inspector general on Tuesday questioned the accuracy of anti-terrorism statistics gathered by the FBI and federal prosecutors, saying they included immigration violations, drug trafficking and marriage fraud cases even when there was no evidence linking them to terrorist activity. In a 140-page audit released Tuesday, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power ran up a $97-million overtime bill over an 11-month period, with some money going to employees who did not show up for work, an internal audit has found. The study, ordered by the board that oversees the nation's largest municipal utility, also found that some employees reported both overtime and absences on the same days. The 2 million hours of overtime were incurred between March 2005 and February 2006.

Four City Council members on Friday demanded an accounting by the Department of Water and Power in the wake of an internal audit of overtime paid by the municipal utility. The audit found the DWP had paid nearly $97 million in overtime during an 11-month period. "Such a large expenditure of public funds must be reviewed with the highest level of scrutiny," said the council motion, introduced by Wendy Greuel and supported by Jose Huizar, Jan Perry and Bernard C. Parks.