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Auditor Out, Consultants In

Last week's announcement that City Auditor Preston Doerflinger would be leaving his job to join the cabinet of Gov. Mary Fallin as finance director does not mean the work of the city's Management Review Office, which Doerflinger also led, will come to a halt, according to Terry Simonson, Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr.'s chief of staff.

Simonson said the Management Review Office, which is charged with working on the recommendations included in the recent KPMG audit of city government efficiency, would continue to operate in Doerflinger's absence.

The MRO recently was buoyed by the addition of two consultants whose job it is to help wade through the hundreds of recommendations included in the KPMG audit and determine which can be implemented to help save the city money.

"He's only been doing that on a part-time basis," Simonson said of Doerflinger. "So between myself and Chris Benge (the mayor's director of intergovernmental and enterprise development) and the staff and the consultants, there will be absolutely no interruption and no noticeable difference. There are things happening now with the departments that don't involve him in a hands-on way."

The consultants -- Michael Brink and Tom Olson -- are government efficiency experts who worked for Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith in the 1990s when that city reshaped its municipal government in the wake of a KPMG audit. Both joined the MRO two weeks ago, Simonson said, and their salaries are being paid by the Tulsa Community Foundation. The two are under contract in Tulsa for up to 12 months, he said.

"If we need them to be here through all of 2011, they will be," Simonson said.

The mayor's chief of staff said no official replacement for Doerflinger as director of the MRO would be named.

"That isn't really necessary," he said. "We'll continue to communicate with the council about pertinent developments in the office, and the process will continue to move forward as it should."