The Cherry Creek News: "Mayor John Hickenlooper and Auditor Dennis Gallagher announced their agreement on a proposed financial charter reform measure on Thursday, jointly meeting with the media on the steps of the Denver City and County Building. The proposal - which updates the century-old financial operations in the City to increase accountability, establish a Chief Financial Officer under the Mayor and enhance the oversight role of the Auditor - resulted from five months of in-depth analysis by the City's Financial Management Task Force and collaboration between the Mayor's Office, Auditor's Office and City Council. If approved by City Council, the charter amendment could go before Denver voters this November...
"By bringing all financial functions within the administration under a new Chief Financial Officer, the City will be able to: Improve efficiency of its operations, reducing redundancies and expediting processes; Generate more accurate financial information in a more timely manner, which will enable better decision-making; Correct the weaknesses in financial controls identified repeatedly by the City's outside auditors, thereby reducing the risk of mistakes or fraud within the City's financial systems; and Create new safeguards in our system by replacing the Auditor's role in administrative financial processing with a more important ability to audit the City's financial activities.
"By creating a strong performance auditing function with the Auditor's Office, the proposal will: Provide the Auditor's Office with the ability to suggest improvements for any agency in the City; Enable the Mayor or City Council to ask the Auditor's Office to explore areas of concern and make recommendations; and Identify areas of efficiency and/or cost savings within the City's operations; Enable City Council to set the procedures for performance audits; Enhanced Checks and Balances.
"The proposal not only retains the appropriate checks and balances inherent in the City's century-old financial systems, but it also modernizes and improves them by: Replacing the Auditor's administrative processing role with a true and robust audit function and full authority to look at any transaction with the City at any time; Retaining the Auditor's role in contract review, while also ensuring efficiency by establishing appropriate time limits for review; Preserving the Auditor's role in applying prevailing wage enforcement; and Creating a new Audit Committee of outside experts chaired by the Auditor with two appointees from each of the three branches of Denver City government to provide additional insight and guidance with respect to these new auditing activities."
Category: Denver November 2006 Election
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