The summary said the audit “did not find significant inspection compliance issues internally,” and Montano expressed confidence that inspectors were finally getting the message that their work is critical to construction safety.
“I m confident that leadership is embracing the new change and then distilling it down to their supervisors and below level,” Montano said on Oct. 12, 2020.
But the TV station later received the full audit results through a public records request, and the picture wasn’t as rosy as Montano and the audit summary had portrayed. The already small sample of 720 inspection files turned out to be what one auditor called a “haphazard” mixture of in-house city inspectors with GPS data to track whether they showed up at construction sites and private, third-party inspectors with no GPS data to track their whereabouts.