Opinion

Auditing the auditors

The more government “oversight,” the more waste, fraud and corruption. That seems to be the lesson from news that a government auditing firm is now itself under investigation.

The firm is called Navigant. It has been cited for “highly questionable billing” and exorbitant expenses linked to work it did for the Long Island Power Authority. The investigative panel behind the report is the “Moreland Commission on Utility Storm Preparation and Response.” It was formed by Gov. Cuomo to provide “a comprehensive investigation of the practices of the State’s utilities” in the wake of the power outages that followed Hurricane Sandy.

The commission’s findings about Navigant are being sent to prosecutors. Meanwhile, three other institutions — the city comptroller, the Port Authority and LIPA — have announced their own audits.

What irony. Besides its work for LIPA, Navigant was hired to audit the Port Authority’s finances as well as to search for fraud and waste by developers of the city’s electronic payroll system. In all three cases, the idea was for Navigant to find savings or recover funds for the taxpayers.

Now it looks as though Navigant may have contributed to that waste and fraud. The Moreland folks cite a “disturbing revolving door” between the firm and LIPA. We wonder if something similar might have existed with the Port Authority, which hired Navigant in 2011 to do a major audit.

That audit, after all, was a way for Govs. Cuomo and Chris Christie — who oversee the PA — to distance themselves from PA toll hikes they preposterously claimed to have known nothing about in advance.

When it finally came out, the Navigant audit was worse than useless. It cited years of PA “dysfunction” and overspending. But it referred to the folks who hired them as the PA’s “revitalized leadership.”

At the time, we wrote off the audit as “political theater.” Now a new set of auditors and prosecutors will be trying to find out if Navigant overcharged.

One question: Who’s going to audit them?