Los Angeles City Council Approves Motion to Require City Employees to Report Fraud

The Los Angeles City Council today approved a motion that will not only require city employees to report fraud, waste and abuse, but provide training through the city controller's office on how to do so.

"We passed a similar motion in October 2009," said Councilman Paul Koretz, who represents District 5, which includes Westwood and Century City. "Hopefully, this motion will give it more of a push."

The motion, introduced by Councilman Dennis Zine, District 3, instructs the city attorney's office to create amendments to two of the city's Administrative codes to use stronger language to encourage employees to report incidents where city funds are being mis-used. Koretz said that part of the city attorney's job will be to define what constitutes waste or outright fraud.

He also said that whistle-blower protections should be either checked or put in place to prevent employees from being retaliated against.

"I don't know how strong our whistle-blower protections are," Koretz said. "That's probably something we'll have to look at it, too."

He added that it would not be fair to employees to require them to report fraud, then leave them unprotected.

Koretz said that he hoped the city attorney's office would have the amendments ready for a vote by the council within a few months, but pointed out that the office is already very busy, so it might take longer.

"We had our motion that took forever," Koretz said. "One would hope that [the final amendment] would come in the next three months."