City Spending News
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson pushes for independent city services audit
The mayor he hopes the audit will help the city save money.
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson is pushing for a new independent audit initiative aimed at enhancing the performance and accountability of city services.
In his latest newsletter, Watson announced plans to introduce an ordinance that would establish a formal process for conducting regular, citywide performance audits.
According to the mayor, the goal is to create a system that not only boosts transparency and efficiency, but also helps the city save money.
“What we need to do is take the next big step,” Watson said. “And that is, we need to institutionalize a program or process where we’re doing a citywide or a systemwide performance audit.”
Mayor Watson noted that while performance audits conducted over the past three years have yielded positive outcomes, there is still room for improvement.
Watson said it made more sense to create the program through an ordinance instead of a charter amendment, so the city could start the audits sooner. He also emphasized that an ordinance can be written to meet the practical needs of day-to-day governing and evolve as needed.
“A charter amendment makes us wait until almost the end of 2026," he wrote in his Watson Wire article. "A May charter election puts us at mid-year. And then it takes time to start the actual audit process."
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Read the full story at KVUE.com.
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