56-page audit<\/a> raises concerns that some city electricians may be taking advantage of weak oversight to get paid unwarranted overtime or to spend many work hours not performing their duties.<\/p>\nThe audit prompted San Diego to significantly strengthen last week an overtime policy for workers called back into the field after their shift ends. The revised policy requires far more documentation and details.<\/p>\n
City officials say they also recently took \u201ccorrective action\u201d against two electricians found by the audit to have spent 198 hours \u2013 the equivalent of 25 workdays \u2013 parked for long stretches at sites where no documented repairs took place.<\/p>\n
City Auditor Andy Hanau said Monday that the audit raises major concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is extensive evidence of significant operational inefficiencies and a lack of accountability within the program,\u201d Hanau said Monday. \u201cTaken together, these problems are leading to a waste of taxpayer dollars, contributing to the growing streetlight repair backlog, and delaying responses to resident requests for streetlight maintenance.\u201d<\/p>\n
While city officials agreed to implement all 12 recommended changes in the audit, they also criticized the audit in unusually aggressive language and defended many of their streetlight repair and oversight practices.<\/p>\n
They contend the audit made \u201csweeping assumptions about work activity\u201d and essentially cherry-picked data to paint the worst possible picture of the city and its Transportation Department, which oversees streetlight repair.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were several instances where data that was inaccurate, incomplete, or presented without sufficient context were used,\u201d city officials said in their 13-page response.<\/p>\n
Officials contend they explained their concerns about context to the auditors while the auditors were compiling data and coming to their conclusions, but that the auditors chose to ignore those concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cManagement believes the performance audit lacks sufficient context in each category despite several meetings with auditors in which this context was provided,\u201d city officials said.<\/p>\n
City officials also took issue with the auditor waiting seven months to inform the Transportation Department of an anonymous tip about the two employees spending many work hours not performing their duties.<\/p>\n
\u201cTimely notification would have allowed the department to address the potential waste of taxpayer dollars and take immediate corrective action to stop the alleged activity,\u201d city officials said.<\/p>\n
In response, Hanau said his handling of the hotline tip was appropriate because it allowed his office to explore if there was a broader pattern of potential employee misuse of city equipment and wage theft.<\/p>\n
\u201cNotably, Transportation had not investigated these issues despite numerous red flags,\u201d Hanau said.<\/p>\n
He also said the city\u2019s unusually aggressive response to the audit was troubling.<\/p>\n
\u201cTransportation\u2019s response to the audit findings appears to indicate that management does not fully recognize the magnitude of the operational challenges facing the Streetlight Repair Program,\u201d he said. \u201cSpecifically, we are concerned that Transportation\u2019s response does not convey the level of urgency necessary to identify and address the underlying factors contributing to the Program\u2019s increasing repair backlogs and declining service levels for residents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayor Todd Gloria said Monday he is taking the audit seriously.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m furious about what this audit found, particularly the evidence that city time and taxpayer resources may have been misused by a few city employees,\u201d Gloria said. \u201cI directed my administration to take immediate corrective action, including accelerating implementation of the audit recommendations.\u201d<\/p>\n
A key finding of the audit is that city officials possibly made a bad decision in February 2025 when they directed the city\u2019s 18 full-time streetlight electricians to prioritize a separate duty the city has under state law.<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s \u201cBefore You Dig\u201d program requires local agencies to have an electrician present when utility companies, cable companies or developers are going to dig into the street.<\/p>\n
From February 2025 through October 2025, electricians were told to focus only on \u201cBefore You Dig\u201d requests and urgent streetlight repairs such as exposed live wires \u2013 not ordinary streetlight outages.<\/p>\n
Hanau said this decision led to a sharp increase in the city\u2019s streetlight repair backlog, which nearly tripled from 2,684 in fiscal year 2021 to 7,552 this summer. During that period, the average wait time has jumped from 160 days to 340 days.<\/p>\n
Hanau said it was dubious of city officials to conclude electricians could only handle \u201cBefore You Dig\u201d repairs \u2013 called \u201cDigAlerts.\u201d He contends such work would typically leave electricians multiple hours for ordinary streetlight repairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe available data indicates that DigAlert responses likely do not require all of electricians\u2019 regular working hours and suggests potential capacity to complete some routine streetlight repairs during regular time,\u201d the audit says. \u201cData suggests that dedicating regular working hours almost exclusively to DigAlert responses was likely unnecessary.\u201d<\/p>\n
The audit also stresses that the backlog increased despite the city devoting more money to streetlight repair and paying more overtime to streetlight electricians \u2014 despite no increase in the number of repair requests.<\/p>\n
City officials said a large chunk of the additional city money was needed to cover rising costs for electricity, but the audit notes that between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2026 labor costs rose from $2.3 million to $5.7 million and overtime costs rose from $230,000 to $1.4 million.<\/p>\n
While employee pay raises play some role in those increases, the audit notes that employee hours devoted to streetlight repair increased from 13,600 to 28,000 and that overtime hours climbed from 600 to 5,300.<\/p>\n
The audit stresses the importance of working streetlights.<\/p>\n
\u201cResearch has consistently found that maintaining functional street lighting can reduce crime, decrease traffic crashes and nighttime collisions, and improve residents\u2019 perceptions of safety,\u201d the audit says. \u201cAs a result, timely and effective streetlight repairs are important to protecting public safety and maintaining residents\u2019 quality of life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Diego\u2019s gaping backlog of roughly 7,000 streetlight repairs \u2013 and the 340-day average wait to get them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,23,205,100,13,74,76,75,1696],"class_list":["post-508970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}