The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services dialed up at least $514,000 in “potentially unnecessary and inappropriate” cell phone service charges in 2009—part of a pattern of loose oversight and lax management of the phones uncovered in a new county audit.

The report, released today by Auditor-Controller Wendy L. Watanabe, found that the department, which spends $2.2 million a year on cell phone services, had at least 250 phones for which it could not identify the users. It also paid monthly service fees for more than 1,400 cell phones and 220 broadband cards that were sitting idle in 2009.

Moreover, the department footed the bill for employees’ personal international long distance charges as well as other potentially inappropriate charges for roaming, directory assistance and call forwarding.

“Our review disclosed significant weaknesses in DCFS’ controls over its cell phones,” Watanabe said in a summary of the audit’s findings filed with the Board of Supervisors.

Watanabe’s report to supervisors said that the department’s management already is beginning to take corrective action by updating their cell phone inventory, cancelling service for unused phones and changing the ways in which they review monthly bills.

Among the questionable cell phone use cited in the audit:

–One employee racked up more than $2,000 in personal international long distance bills between December, 2008, and November, 2009, and did not reimburse the department.

–Another claimed to have lost her phone but didn’t report it missing. Over the course of 14 months, the department paid $8,000 in service charges on the phone, including roaming charges from Mexico.

–An employee ran up $2,827 in texting charges from December, 2008 through November, 2009. In all, the department paid $21,000 for employee texting in 2009.

–Employees dialing directory assistance from their cell phones cost the department more than $54,000 in 2009, and $9,000 for call forwarding charges between December, 2008 and November, 2009. A single employee accounted for $2,533 of the call forwarding charges during that period.

The audit recommends that DCFS management begin keeping an accurate cell phone inventory, including up-to-date records on who’s using the phones. It also urges the department to deactivate unassigned and unused phones and broadband cards and to institute monthly reviews of cell phone and broadband bills.

And it recommends tighter controls to ensure that extras such as directory assistance and texting are needed—and that employees who use those services for non-business purposes reimburse the county.

Posted 12/21/10

Hard times, bad moods, gnarly voters – some years just cry out for a dose of California mellow, for an “only-in-L.A.” kind of holiday.

So how about a “Hollywood Bowl” to hold your La Brea Bakery granola? Or maybe a beach towel that will, er, knock ‘em dead at Venice Beach next summer? Or a zen-like little slice of West Coast art in your stocking, inviting you to dispel your toxins with beauty and purity?

We took an online stroll through a half-dozen or so of Los Angeles County’s public gift shops as the wrapping paper officially starts flying. Then, just for good measure, added a handful of other cool local museum stores. Turns out they’re not only a way to support L.A.s great civic institutions, but also an invaluable source for California-style holiday dreamers.  Here are some of our favorites:

1. We felt cleansed just looking at this “Pure Beauty” soap from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art gift shop. Inspired by West Coast conceptual artist John Baldessari , it’s scented with ginger and lavender.

2. How cute are the La Brea Tar Pits? Pretty cute this season. The Los Angeles County Natural History Museum is celebrating its resident celebrity, the sabre-toothed cat, with plush Smilodon Cuddlekin, for kids and other holiday snugglers.

 3. Randy Newman loves L.A. so much he wrote a song about it, which you can hear all this month in “Randy Newman’s Harps and Angels,” the great new show at the Mark Taper Forum. Gift cards for The Center Theatre Group – that’s the Ahmanson, Taper and Kirk Douglas Theatres for you non-Angelenos – are available online, with free gift wrap! We love it!

4. The L.A. Phil won’t be back at the Hollywood Bowl for a few months, but you can fill this cool bowl as often as you want, and even put it in the oven or the microwave.

5. Killer beach towels are always in season, and where better to look than the Los Angeles County Coroner’s gift shop, Skeletons in the Closet? Their chalk-outline beach towels are generous-sized and a perennial favorite, but the store restocks every few weeks, so if they’re out of stock, keep checking.

6. The gift shop at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden in Arcadia doesn’t have much in the way of online shopping, but if you buy a membership as a gift for yourself or a loved one, you get discounts there and at nurseries all over Southern California. Poinsettias have never been prettier!

7. This pomegranate menorah evokes not only the holiday season, but also a fruit that is one of the winter hallmarks of L.A. Find it at the Museum of Tolerance Gift Shop.

8. Before she was an artist with shows at the Getty and a faculty gig at CalArts,  Jo Ann Callis was just another ‘60s housewife trying to get through the holidays in suburban L.A. We couldn’t resist these porcelain dessert plates from The Getty Museum Store, bearing her signature images of subverted domesticity.

9. Nothing says Christmas in California like bright colors and extreme takes on religion. R. Crumb, a Golden Stater for much of his career, brings it home with his illustrated “Book of Genesis”, available at the Hammer Museum Store.

10. Ed Ruscha , the quintessential L.A. artist, summed up the quintessential L.A. attitude when he created this art object for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s 30^th anniversary. Talk about a New Year’s resolution.

Posted 12/1/10

Although the rest of the nation may see us as one big, blue blob when it comes to elections, we are a diverse lot, we tribes of L.A. County.

True, voters here did more or less favor the Democratic candidates at the top of the ballot. But preliminary tallies supplied by the County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk indicate that we begged to differ when it came to the propositions.

For example, only the Third District cast a majority of its ballots for the defeated Prop. 19, which would have legalized marijuana.

Although the last of the provisional and vote-by-mail ballots are being counted, here’s what we know now (see below) about how nearly 2 million ballots were cast in each of the five L.A. County supervisorial districts, ranging from the urban core, to seaside enclaves, to the high desert.

For a continuing look at the vote and results for a wide array of contests, click here.

Posted 11/11/10

Interested in keeping up with important decisions affecting the environment and land use in L.A. County? Regional Planning Commission meetings are now just a mouse click away. It’s no longer necessary to dig through pages of transcripts to see what happened, and you won’t need to make a long trek across town to show up in person, either. Beginning this week, live and recorded Regional Planning meetings will be available online, in living color, at http://planning.lacounty.gov/video.

The Regional Planning Commission covers many issues that affect residents in unincorporated areas of the Third District. Upcoming decisions include adopting a new general plan for Los Angeles County, which will literally shape unincorporated communities for generations to come.  It will affect how much development will occur in sensitive natural environments countywide, as well as developments affecting individual neighborhoods from Topanga Canyon to Universal City.

Systems analyst Dennis Slavin spearheaded the effort to update the technology of the meeting room and offer a bird’s-eye view of the meetings to the public.  His goal was to make it easier for residents to participate, and to improve the transparency and efficiency of the process.  When he took on the project, the room’s technology had not been updated in nearly a half-century.  Presentations involved paper maps that were difficult to see even for those present at the meetings.  Now, “meetings include visual presentations and GIS mapping, a full production that will provide a quality presentation to the public,” Slavin says.

In addition to streaming video of the meeting, the webcasts also allow viewers to get a close-up look at materials being presented and to access documents like the meeting agenda from the same screen.

You can sample the new technology by tuning in to the next commission meeting, on Wednesday, November 10.

Posted 11/4/10

Ron Artest of the Los Angeles Lakers couldn’t be prouder of his new fan base:  the nation’s mental health practitioners. And in this town, he can now count Dr. Marvin Southard as among his biggest cheerleaders.

Southard, director of Los Angeles County’s Department of Mental Health, told the Board of Supervisors in a letter on Wednesday that Artest has agreed to make a public service announcement for the department, “designed to address stigma and discrimination towards individuals with mental illness.”

As you might remember, just moments after his spectacular performance in the deciding game of the NBA championship last year, Artest profusely thanked his “psychiatrist” on national TV for helping him quiet his emotions so he could rise to the occasion (see video below.)

Given his quirky personality and well-documented anger problems of the past, Artest’s praise of his psychiatrist (actually a sports psychologist in Houston) prompted plenty of jokes. But for him, it was no laughing matter. Years of therapy, he said, had helped him right his course.

“I’m older now, so I think it’s about that time that I stop complaining about what people think about me, because it’s more important than me, you know?” Artest told NBA writer Scott Howard-Cooper last month. “That whole thing (after the championship), I was thinking about it, in my brain I’m like, ‘Am I really about to say this? On national TV?’ But then the other part of me was like, ‘It’s bigger than you. It’s bigger than you. It’s more about people that really need to hear this.’ ”

The PSA, which will be filmed at the Lakers’ practice facility, is scheduled to be produced by Gary Foster. Among his credits, Foster produced “The Soloist,” the film adaptation of Los Angeles Times’ columnist Steve Lopez’ book about his relationship with homeless musician Nathaniel Ayres.

Artest, known as a fiercely tenacious defender, was praised Wednesday by Southard for his off-court fortitude.

“Ron’s contribution is really important,” Southard said in an interview. “One of the main things that cause a burden for people with mental health issues is the social exclusion that they experience.” He said Artest is taking “a really big step of inclusion into the mainstream of our society.”

Artest also has said that he plans to auction the diamond-encrusted championship ring he received during an emotional ceremony before the Lakers’ home-opener on Tuesday. He said he wants the proceeds used to place more therapists in schools.

“You work so hard to get a ring, and now you have a chance to help more people than just yourself, instead of just satisfying yourself,” he told Howard-Cooper. “What’s better than that? For me, this is very important.”

Posted 10/27/10

It has always been, shall we say, a bare-bones operation, but the Los Angeles County Coroner’s famous “Skeletons in the Closet” gift shop is being haunted by budget gremlins this Halloween.

The little novelty store—known for its toe-tag key chains and chalk-mark-outline beach towels—has developed a cult-like following since 1993, when it opened. But scaring up a profit has been another matter. Although coroner’s officials say the store’s finances are improving, a forthcoming county audit is expected to report that the enterprise is still in the hole after 17 years.

The difficulty appears to be fairly basic, says L.A. County Auditor-Controller Wendy Watanabe, whose staff has conducted several reviews of the store dating back nearly a decade. She says the store’s sales simply haven’t covered its costs for a variety of reasons, ranging from the general demand for souvenirs to marketing and inventory issues. “It’s a nice concept,” Watanabe says, “but sometimes those little details can kill you.”

The numbers involved, of course, are miniscule considering the county’s $23 billion budget. The store’s revenues and costs haven’t surpassed roughly $175,000 annually for the past several years. But the shop has provided a unique form of public relations for the coroner’s office, putting a whimsical and irreverent twist on a public service that is otherwise associated with the macabre and morbid.

Founded after a secretary at the coroner’s office made a gag gift for one of the doctors, the store has grown from its original home in a supply closet to a spacious storefront in the historic lobby of the coroner’s office. Mail orders come from all over the world for offbeat souvenirs that include skeleton craft sets, coasters, official coroner’s T-shirts and signature boxer shorts, known as “undertakers.” In recent years, the store even has been featured occasionally on cable TV and novelty bus tours.

But its location—in a complex of county and industrial buildings east of Downtown—is a long way from Los Angeles’ more conventional tourist spots, and the store’s foot traffic is limited mostly to bereaved next-of-kin and others with coroner business.

The current financial audit, due in a couple of weeks, is a routine follow-up to a 2002 review that took a broader look at the coroner’s office. Among such factors as wavering consumer demand and inventory issues, auditors discovered another hit to the store’s bottom line: merchandise was being given away as gifts to guest speakers and departing county employees.

Money generated by the store is earmarked for the county’s Youthful Drunk Driving Visitation Program, the scared-straight morgue tour for teenaged drivers. But with so few dollars coming in, auditors this year found that the drunk-driving program was subsidizing the gift shop, rather than the other way around.

Anthony T. Hernandez, director of the coroner’s department, says that, by his calculations, Skeletons in the Closet made slightly more than it spent during the last two fiscal years because of better inventory controls and a tighter budget. The losses reported by the auditors, he and Watanabe say, represent cumulative totals since the store opened, not a year-by-year tally.

“It goes up and down,” says Hernandez. “Some years everybody’s rushing to us, and others—well, not so much.” Among other things, he said, the store is planning to improve its online marketing and is hoping to set up a Facebook page or other social networking site in the near future.

For store clerk Edna Pereyda, the facts and figures in all those audits, past and present, mean one thing: some long, solitary days behind the counter.

On a recent Friday at lunch, she worked for more than an hour with no company but the autographed 8×10-inch glossies of celebrities who’ve occasionally stopped by while researching movie action roles. A plastic skeleton hand guarded her little dish of Halloween candy. 

“People ask if this place is haunted,” she jokes. “But, no.”

Things change: The last time Los Angeles County went to the polls for a gubernatorial general election, Bernie Madoff was a respected investment advisor, no one had ever heard of an iPhone and Saddam Hussein was still alive.

Electorates change, too. Voter registration closed last week in California for the November 2 election, and the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk has now finalized the tally. The agency, in collaboration with the DMV and a number of city clerks and community organizations, had stayed open until midnight at more than a dozen locations to accommodate more than 17,000 last-minute registrations. As the updated chart below shows, more than a half-million new voters have registered in L.A. County since the 2006 election.

Democrats have the biggest share of new registrations, with the numbers of Republicans remaining largely flat. Also, note the growth in the “decline-to-state” category, which is consistent with national and statewide trends.

As for the 3^rd Supervisorial District (and the other four), here are the most recent registration tallies, which soon will be updated. Scroll down to the Los Angeles County heading to see the preferences locally.

Posted 10/19/10

This year’s Holiday Celebration promises a little less tinsel, a little more Tinseltown.

The county’s annual free extravaganza will have a shorter running time this year, and for the first time will include short movies from aspiring and professional filmmakers. Would-be Frank Capras have until November 3 to submit their films of two minutes or less on the theme of “childhood memories from the holidays.”

“This town is full of filmmakers. What a great opportunity we might have to reach this kind of artist, especially in Los Angeles, right?” said Adam Davis, who produces the holiday show in addition to his day job running the county’s John Anson Ford Theatres. Arts Commission Executive Director Laura Zucker added: “We tend to forget in Los Angeles that media arts are part of the arts.”

The top 10 short film submissions will be posted online for the public to view and vote on; the best three will each win $1,000 and a spot in the Holiday Celebration lineup.

That lineup this year will feature 22 acts, from a hip-hop-infused “Nutcracker” to an all-women’s barbershop chorus. The county Arts Commission, which produces the show, is shortening the program to three hours from six because of a $150,000 budget cut.

Even in its shorter form, more than 600 performers will be featured in the show, which will take place on December 24 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The show will be beamed onto a JumboTron on the Music Center Plaza for any overflow crowd or interested passersby, and also will air on KCET.

This will be the 51^st year for the Holiday Celebration, which was started by the late Supervisor Kenneth Hahn in 1959.

Posted 10/05/10

Los Angeles County’s child welfare officials won a key victory in Sacramento this week when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a bill expanding an important computer database used in child abuse investigations.

Assembly Bill 2322 improves the information available to county social workers in a computer database called the Family and Children’s Index (FCI), which provides child welfare workers with key medical, law enforcement and social services data as they launch investigations.

The bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Mike Feuer and speaker emeritus Karen Bass, allows L.A. County to include in the FCI database convictions for crimes against children by family members and others living with a child who have come to the attention of child welfare authorities.

Under the old system, social workers had to wait days or weeks to obtain information about convictions of family members and could learn nothing about convictions of non-family members.

The bill was sponsored by the county, and officials from the County Counsel and the Chief Executive Office were instrumental in crafting provisions to improve FCI.

The latest expansion follows news last week that the LAPD will become the first non-county agency to contribute data to FCI.

The new law takes effect immediately.

Post 9-30-10