Jason Hadavi loves being the thing some people fear most: an auditor.
To him, his job as City Auditor is about community service. How do you make city government better? By looking at what works, what doesn’t and pivoting when necessary.
As Austin faces mounting budget pressures and scrutiny over how public dollars are spent, the City Auditor’s Office plays a key role in evaluating whether city programs are working as intended. The office investigates fraud allegations, reviews city operations and issues recommendations meant to improve accountability across departments.
Over the last year, the office has audited subjects including the city’s license plate reader program, nonprofit funding, lobbyist compliance and contract management.
Hadavi’s auditing story begins in El Paso, where he grew up and graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso with an accounting degree. He became a financial auditor for the state of Arizona, then moved into fraud investigations.
The difference between audits and investigations? Audits assess programs. Investigations scrutinize potential policy or criminal violations by employees.
In 2005, he moved to Austin, joined the City of Austin Auditor’s Office and continued his work in fraud investigation. Twenty years later, the Austin City Council appointed him city auditor, overseeing a team of nearly 30 people.
Sometimes the city listens. Sometimes it doesn’t. Some issues, like contract oversight, have remained problematic for decades. But there have been successes.
Hadavi spoke to Austin Current about his work and why it matters. His answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.
How does the auditor’s office choose what to audit or investigate?
It’s a risk-based process. We identify risks from a wide variety of sources. So while we’re out doing audits, we’re observing things, and we might notice something unrelated to the project we’re conducting, take note of that and add it to the list of potential audits we do.
We do peer city research to see what other cities are dealing with, and see if that connects with what we’re doing. We’re looking at things that are changing from an industry perspective. So when there are major shifts related to our utilities or the airport or the way transportation departments are operating, we look at those things. We pay close attention to the media to see what they’re writing about, what things are bubbling up in their world. We also have a way for residents to submit audit ideas.
If you look at our 2026 audit plan, you’ll notice multiple projects with a financial focus, and that’s in response to our current budget climate.
How do you conduct an audit?
It depends on the topic. Sometimes we make use of surveys. We definitely do observations. So in our recent speed reduction audit, we were talking about different speed reduction methods that the city is using. We were in different parts of the city where speed humps were installed, and we were evaluating the traffic flow. Some residents who are really passionate come talk to our staff and communicate their opinions. And then we comb through data.
The Auditor’s Office investigations have pointed to employee wrongdoing. What happens after that?
When we’re dealing with a former employee, someone who’s retired or resigned, there may not be any action other than transparency into what took place. If we substantiate that an employee violated a portion of city code, we send that to their department. There may be a personnel action. Sometimes, if the employee (is someone who) is in good standing, who’s always done good work, who had a lapse in judgment or made an honest mistake that turned out to be a violation, then the accountability action may not be that severe. You know, it may be something like a written reprimand or short suspension. If something is really serious, then it could be termination. Where there’s a criminal impact, we’re required to send our information over to (Austin Police Department) and the (District Attorney’s) office.
Does the city take the audits seriously?
I would say in the audit industry, this is a pretty major, major topic.
If recommendations aren’t implemented, then why do the audits in the first place? This is something that we’ve seen a lot of progress on in the last few years. It hasn’t always been this way. On our website, you can see the status of recommendations dating back to 2019. If you jump on there, you’ll see since 2019, we’ve issued 248 recommendations, and 116 of those have already been fully implemented.
What’s an example of an audit that resulted in changes?
Following Winter Storm Uri, we did a disaster preparedness audit. Management has implemented those recommendations and some of those were high bars that we set for them. Now every time there’s even the threat of a storm, I see information being pushed out to the communities and how quickly our shelters are activated. That’s the result of a lot of work that we’ve done at the auditor’s office and that feels really good.
