A Scathing Rebuke For LA's Building Department?

"Along with the Los Angeles Police and Fire Departments, Building and Safety is one of the most important City agencies in maintaining public safety. During the last several years the Department of Building and Safety has focused more on improving customer services rather than maintaining public safety. The Department has made customer service a priority over public safety, and that's just wrong," said Los Angeles City Controller Laura Chick.

"Chick also made 30 recommendations to improve the department's inspection and enforcement practices, including ensuring that all inspectors meet training requirements, more ollow-up inspections by supervisors and better tracking of disciplined inspectors. Reached late Monday, Department of Building and Safety officials acknowledged that a long-running staffing shortage has led to delays in inspections." (Los Angeles Business Journal)

Among the audit's findings:

-- The Department lacks consistent and compelling code enforcement methods to encourage compliance by long-term code violators

-- The Department has a significant number of backlogged inspections that are required by State law or City Code including those for elevators and seismic shut-off valves.

-- The Department's oversight of its inspectors is not adequate to ensure quality of inspections

-- The Department does not have adequate procedures to follow-up on expired permits, temporary Certificates of Occupancy and outstanding code violations.

From the report summary:

Over the last several years, the Department has significantly changed their approach in carrying out their responsibilities from a "regulator" to a "facilitator." Management's focus is on being more "customer-driven" and delivering their services timely. The challenge for the Department is to find the right balance between being service oriented towards their customers and meeting its mandate to ensure that buildings and structures are code-compliant and safe. While the Department has achieved success with their customer service delivery efforts, this audit revealed that the Department does not ensure their inspection and code enforcement activities are fully meeting the Department’s mission. We found the Department has difficulty staying current with increasing workloads, ensuring the quality of work performed, and having sufficient and accurate data to effectively monitor how well it is doing in carrying out its mission.

Among other interesting statistics:

-- Since Fiscal Year 2001-02, the number of building permits issued annually by the City has steadily increased from approximately 118,000 to 142,000 projected for the current Fiscal Year.2 There are over 70 high-rise buildings3 proposed for construction and last year 15,000 dwelling unit building permits were issued, an increase of 3,000 over the prior year. (2 In Fiscal Year 1996-97, there were 79,000 permits issued. In the past nine years, the number of permits issued has risen by 80%.)

-- With an operating budget of over $68 million and staff of more than 800, the Department, as mandated by the City’s Administrative Code, has the power and duty to enforce the City’s building regulations, codified as Chapter IX of the Los Angeles Municipal Code.