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Chairman Mendelson Swears In Kathy Patterson as DC Auditor

Last Thursday, taking time out from participating in the Wilson Building services marking Marion Barry’s death, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson swore in former three-term Ward 3 Councilmember Kathy Patterson as DC Auditor. Established in the Home Rule Charter, the Auditor is the Council’s counterpart to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, assisting the Council in its legislative oversight functions by conducting financial audits, program reviews and evaluations and special inquiries.

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The Georgetown Dish
The Georgetown Dish

Lately the Auditor’s reports, with titles like DC Public Education Reform Amendment Act (PERAA) Report No. 3 Supplemental andOutcomes of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Employment Program, have, as Mike DeBonis put it in The Washington Post, “tend to land with something less than a thud” (October 10, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/mike-debonis/wp/2014/10/10/kathy-pa…), a perception that Mendelson is clearly looking to change. He wants Patterson to “get beyond boring audits and into issues of waste and fraud and government efficiency [to show how] to make the dollars go further.” He cites the city’s multi-million dollar school modernization and affordable housing programs as inviting close examination.

Patterson, most recently with the Pew Charitable Trusts, was known for her forceful use of the Council’s oversight powers. In particular, she spearheaded the investigation of the wrongful MPD arrests of protestors in Pershing Park in 2002, leading to large financial settlements.