Richmond: West Contra Costa schools narrow choices on construction program audit
RICHMOND — A West Contra Costa schools subcommittee is recommending Glendora-based Vicenti Lloyd Stutzman LLP to do a forensic audit of the district’s school construction bond program.
At a hearing Wednesday, subcommittee members cited the firm’s extensive experience in auditing public school construction programs and its past success in weeding out fraud and lax accounting practices,
The probe is based on allegations by employee Dennis Clay of negligence in contract administration and billing, budgeting and change order approval, as well as conflicts of interest and other issues in the district’s $1.6 billion bond program.
A panel of VLS presenters promised to delve deeply into program records to uncover fraud risk, meaning identifying where there are clear opportunities for fraud to occur, and then focusing on those points by interviewing a range of program participants.
Those participants could be contractors, construction managers, former district employees and others who might have been witnesses to mismanagement or wrongdoing.