WA performance audits: Beyond gotcha?
Washington State’s bold embrace of performance audits of state and local governments has drawn a mixed review from GOVERNING magazine. The Legislature adopted a performance audit law in 2005, and it was soon expanded by the voters that fall, via Tim Eyman’s Initiative 900. The state has long done financial audits, tracking how public dollars are spent and accounted for. Performance audits go a big step further, looking at how effectively the money is spent. Entire agencies and programs, as…