April 14, 2005

San Jose City Council approves fraud and audit hotline

One-year pilot program begins July 1

By Sheila Sanchez
Staff Writer

After surveying the 10 largest cities in the state and country, the San Jose City Council unanimously voted April 5 to create a one-year fraud and audit hotline, which officials hope to have up and running by July 1.

As recommended by the city’s Rules Committee last month, San Jose’s Office of Employee Relations (OER) Director Alex Gurza, San Jose City Auditor Jerry Silva and San Jose City Attorney Rick Doyle will manage the pilot program meeting once a month to review calls and take appropriate action when authentic reports of wrongdoing are reported by members of the public or city employees.

“I had been thinking about the hotline for a long time,” Silva said. “I was aware that other cities and states have features like this. It just seemed to me that with the recent events (flawed $8 million technology deal for the new City Hall and former Council-man Terry Gregory’s ethics violations) that this is the right time to propose it.”

The program will feature a telephone number that complainants may use to report concerns and problems anonymously, an e-mail address, a fax number, and a downloadable complaint form from the city’s Web site.
The OER will decide where calls should be referred to, whether they should go to a particular city department or whether they should be directed to Silva’s office or Doyle’s office for further investigation.

The OER, however, will forward basic information about all calls to Silva in a somewhat truncated version, with complainants’ names or alleged perpetrators’ names purged. Silva will need the information for statistical purposes, including a brief overview of the call.

During working hours, OER staff members will take the complaints over the phone. After hours complainants may leave a message. The information will be entered into a database maintained by Silva.

Although complaints may be anonymous, Silva said the program will encourage them to call back the week after their initial complaint is made as he’s discovered from other cities that when whistleblowers are lost, it becomes impossible to follow up on their allegations.

The city will advertise the hotline, which has yet to be established, on its Internet and Intranet sites.

“At one time it didn’t look like we were going to work out any kind of compromise,” Silva said, about whom at City Hall was going to manage the service. “We couldn’t get comfortable on what we were coming up with in terms of a way to do this.”

After contacting city officials in Phoenix, the city’s administration felt more comfortable with its model, after which the model is patterned.

In Phoenix, hotline calls are handled by the city manager’s office and are referred to the appropriate city department. The city manager, the city attorney and the city auditor meet regularly to review hotline complaints.

“It’s a start. We’re going to give it a year and I’m anxious to see how it turns out… It comes down to a point where what if during our pilot year we get one allegation that turns out to be significant and proves to be true? Does that make it worth it? That’s the question,” Silva said.

Complaint hotlines are not a new service among public government agencies. The state auditor’s office has a similar hotline and the United States General Accounting Office has the same program, as well as cities like Toronto, Milwaukee and Seattle.

Silva originally wanted the hotline to be located in his office under his management and supervision. In some of the cities he had surveyed the program was conducted by the auditor’s office.

City officials, however, expressed concern about calls that would be best handled by the OER, which handles grievances and fair employment complaints related to harassment and discrimination.

After the program ends in July of 2006, the three officials will present a report to the council detailing the amount of calls received, how the calls were handled and how much cost was involved. The council will then decide whether to continue the program in the future.

Silva said managing the program would be a challenge during tough financial times for all three departments.
“We don’t know the element of cost involved. We’re going to try to do it with available resources. There have been no dollars appropriated for this. I’m going to have to absorb it in my office, Alex (Gurza) will have to absorb it in his office and Rick (Doyle) will have to absorb it in his office. It just seemed that if we were ever going to do it, this was the time to do it,” he said.

San Jose Vice Mayor Cindy Chavez said, “I’m very excited about the hotline because of the opportunity for employees and the community to have one number to report issues that concern them.”

Chavez assured employees and members of the public that they will be guaranteed a safe place to report problems without fear of reprisal or retaliation, adding that the past scandals faced by the city “made it clear to me that we needed a way to create safe spaces for employees to report concerns.”

San Jose Councilwoman Nancy Pyle, who represents Almaden Valley, was confident the new hotline would give residents and employees a way to express their concerns. “Everybody needs a safe harbor where they can bring complaints and get a sense of satisfaction that they have been heard and that appropriate action was taken,” Pyle said.

“We also want to maintain a high quality of service for City Hall government. In order to do that, we need to fix those things that are not right. This is one way to find out what’s not working well,” she added. “The city will do everything in its power to protect the anonymity of the callers.”