Lee Cataluna: Oh, yeah? Well, how’d you like an audit, punk?

Nolan Espinda was right.

And he was wrong, too.

In testimony the beleaguered head of Public Safety submitted to the Legislature, he cited the “weaponization of the auditor’s office” by lawmakers.

However, any department that argues against an audit looks like it can’t handle scrutiny.

Savage. Fearsome. Part blade and part bludgeon. Just uttering the threat of an audit is meant to strike fear in the hearts of government agencies and recipients of public money.

Granted, audits are important tools for management. As the old saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure, and an audit can show where money is leaking out the seams, where inefficiencies have crept in or where goals go unmet year after year in an organization.

But too often, audits are being wielded as the greatest tool of enforcement, a way for lawmakers to seem like they’re rooting out evil and corruption, or simply as a way to mess with a particular agency or administrator.

It’s a hammer. It’s a threat. It’s a way for a politician to get some media coverage.

It is also a way to push off work to somebody else. Instead of digging through documents, making site visits, poring over reports and asking tough questions, calling for an audit allows lawmakers to look like they’re doing something while they’re doing nothing. It’s like telling your kid to take out the garbage. Your hands stay clean, you get to feel powerful by ordering somebody around, and the place smells a little better.

Calling for an audit is sometimes used as a deflection, a way to signal a turn-around after a bunch of bad news. Don’t worry, folks. We’re calling for an audit. It’s all being handled.

Where things really go wrong is once the audit is done. Maybe there’s a two-day run of stories in the news. Then what? The auditors have done their job showing where the problems are, but they’re not the enforcers or the cleanup crew. That means it heads back to lawmakers, and if it’s up to the Legislature or the City Council to do something, then there’s a good chance it won’t be done.

So many government audits come down not to a matter of misused money but to issues of management or not fulfilling the mission. No one is in charge, no processes are in place. Those systemic problems are harder to fix than just firing someone for using the company credit card to buy lunch.

And what is the typical response to a critical audit? Usually some variation of, “Most of those suggested changes have already been implemented.”

Oh, but even then, there’s a bigger gun: the forensic audit — even scarier because it’s targeted. While a financial audit confirms the validity of an agency’s financial records, a forensic audit starts by looking for something wrong and ends with a report that can be presented in court.

Calling for a forensic audit is often a means of public shaming.

Audits are useful and necessary, but they are not a substitute for good management and smart legislating.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.