Just before the elections, the municipal comptroller's report details the past year's irregularities.
By PEGGY CIDORlight rail construction 248 88(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimksi )
As they do every year between November and December, the City Council members recently received the city comptroller's annual report. As city comptroller, Shlomit Rubin's thankless task is to look into how each department has been managed during the past year and to offer the mayor and his staff tools with which to improve and correct the municipality's work.
This year's report has produced one of the most monumental documents - about 1,300 pages - which gives a clear yet disturbing look at the various ways some of the staff at City Hall have failed to afford the residents all of their rights.
"It is both a privilege and a frustrating task," said city councillor Pepe Allalu (Meretz), head of the comptroller's committee, upon delivering the report. "We see how, year after year, so many issues are still far from being taken care of properly, and yet this tool is such an important means by which to fix those failures, despite the fact that every year brings us new issues to look into."
"Much of the report's fate depends on how the elected officials - and the mayor at their head - will react," explains a source in the comptroller's department. "If it is taken seriously, as a means to really improve the situation, that's our best reward; but too often it has been seen as a ploy of the opposition used to taunt the coalition."
Among the many issues included in the 2007-2008 report, special attention was paid to the following: attempts by the Human Resources department to compromise on job requirements to facilitate the hiring of employees' relatives; numerous cases of employees who did not request a permit to work outside the municipality as required by law (including clear cases of conflict of interest); major failures in the fire department, including unconventional fundraising; failure by the municipal parking authority to assure parking for the handicapped; and misuse of the municipality's assets and loss of public funds.
In addition, Rubin devotes a whole chapter to the way the 40th anniversary of the city's reunification was conducted (including financial aspects); there is a chapter on the various problems connected to the light rail project; and there's a chapter dedicated to checking to what degree previous recommendations of the comptroller's committee have been applied regarding the preservation of historic sites.
For the third year in a row, the report comes down hard on the Israeli Heritage Department. Rubin writes: "This department cannot continue to function the way it has - it is imperative that an immediate tender be published to hire a department head and to ensure that the department's employees have the requisite education and experience for their job, which is not the case at present."
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