Fiscal Year 2019, which ended on September 30, was a very busy year for the City of Austin’s Integrity Unit, which is overseen by the Office of the City Auditor.
“Fiscal Year 19 was very busy for my team,” Chief Investigator Brian Malloy told the Audit and Finance Committee. “We had 333 allegations come in. That’s a 21-percent increase from Fiscal Year 18. That’s also the largest number of allegations we’ve received in the last four years.”
The most common allegations were HR-related, including harassment, discrimination, and retaliation. The second-most common were opertational issues. Both are outside of the jurisdiction of the City Auditor, so they were logged and then referred to the appropriate authority, Malloy said.
“As far as issues that are within our jurisdiction, the most common we had alleged to us this year was misuse of city resources, and there were 33 of those. Theft came in with 26 allegations. That can comprise cash theft, inventory theft, or timesheet theft,” he said.”
There were also 15 waste allegations, 14 abuse allegations, and 14 conflict allegations.
Molloy said his unit completed 14 investigations, nine of which were substantiated and turned into public reports, one was found to be inconclusive, and four others were substantiated but determined to be de minimis violations.
Currently, the Integrity Unit has 14 active investigations spanning 11 city departments, many of which fall in line with other complaints lodged against city officials and employees in FY19.
“We have waste, gift solicitation, inventory theft, abuse of position, and misuse of city resources,” Malloy said.
71-percent of the FY19 complaints were made anonymously.
