L.A. VS. LAUSD: IT'S WAR MAYOR DEMANDS AUDIT, THROWS DOWN GAUNTLET.

Byline: Rick Orlov Staff Writer

Gearing up for a dramatic showdown, city and school officials clashed again Tuesday over a proposal by Controller Laura Chick to audit the operations of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa immediately signed a 12-0 City Council resolution urging the school board to invite Chick to conduct the audit, and he warned LAUSD officials that he would seek state authority for the review if they refuse to ask for it.

``We are trying to be a partner with them,'' Villaraigosa said. ``We don't want to be adversarial. But if it means going to the state Assembly or Senate for authorization, we can do that.''

Villaraigosa served as speaker of the Assembly for two years and has numerous allies in key posts in the Legislature.

But school officials, led by Supt. Roy Romer, questioned the need for the audit and indicated they would reject the proposal once it comes before them.

``If he wants to go to the state Legislature to get authority to bring the city (controller) in here for an audit, that's up to him,'' Romer said. ``Right now, she (Chick) does not have the authority to audit the district.

``But this is not the way to approach this. I first heard about it when I got a call from Laura Chick who told me she was going to be holding a news conference a half-hour later calling for an audit. If she was serious, she should have sat down and had a discussion with us. Instead, this looks like a political campaign being driven through weekly press conferences.''

Chick said she had talked at length with Romer and the school board president, Marlene Canter, about conducting an audit of the district independent of the one being done as part of a contract settlement with United Teachers Los Angeles.

``How interesting that the response is one of subterfuge and smoke screens - and anything but the truth,'' Chick said. ``They don't want me in there.''

Romer said he does not believe a Chick audit would turn up more than annual reviews of the district's finances and additional reviews already conducted by state and federal authorities and the district's inspector general.

``This is serious business, and we are looking to the city to be partner with us,'' Romer said. ``By any measure, we have made remarkable improvements in the last 5 1/2 years. The last thing we need is someone standing on the sideline with a stop watch telling us to go faster.''

Romer noted that an $18 billion voter-approved building program has been undertaken and test scores have improved dramatically at all levels since he became superintendent in 1999.

``Are things perfect? No. Are we making improvements? Yes. But we need time for these changes to occur,'' Romer said. ``We don't need more rhetoric about how we have a failing district.''

But Villaraigosa and Chick, joined by several City Council members, said that is the problem with the district.

``When you have more than one-third of your students dropping out and others who cannot read or write, we need to do something,'' Villaraigosa said. ``We are not going to become a world-class city unless we have an educated work force. We will not be able to take advantage of the new economy if we don't have workers who can compete.

``I stand here with Laura Chick because she can do what she does best - root out inefficiency and help redirect tax dollars back into the classroom.''

Chick said she has yet to determine the scope of work in her proposed $800,000 audit, which would be paid for by the school district.

``I would want to sit down with all the stakeholders to determine that,'' Chick said. ``What I think I bring to this process is credibility and a public attention to how the district is spending our tax dollars and educating our children.''

Canter, supporting Romer's views on the issue, said board members would consider Chick's letter, but indicated they are not likely to ask for the audit.

School board member Jon Lauritzen said he tried to persuade Chick to review the audits of the district that already have been conducted and to work on preparation for an upcoming $1.4 million review to be done by the KPMG accounting firm.

``She didn't seem interested in that,'' Lauritzen said. ``I had the feeling that she just wanted a free hand to look at anything she wanted to in the district.''

Chick said she believes that, for an audit to be of value to the public, it has to be independent of district officials. Also, she said, previous audits of the district have been on specific programs.

``None of them have provided an overview of the district, connecting the dots so it makes sense to the public.''

Romer disputed that, pointing to a table with more than two dozen audits conducted over the past year. While some dealt with specific programs, others provided an overview of the district.

``We just got a new bond rating from Moody's, and we have the best rating of an public agency in the state,'' Romer said. ``We didn't get that by accident. We did it through our management.

``Audits and the way we commission them have a vital effect on the financial health of this district. Therefore, we must not allow them to become politicized. We are concerned with a new audit is proposed by press conferences, blast e-mails and public appearances.''

Rick Orlov, [phone]

rick.orlov(at)dailynews.com