City withholds results of MATA audit report
by: Jessica Gertler
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The city of Memphis spent $600,000 of your taxpayer money on a forensic audit of the Memphis Area Transit Authority. Now, they won’t release the report generated from that audit.
MATA has been under the microscope after announcing last summer a $60 million shortfall.
The mayor told us then, he was ordering a forensic audit as part of a broader effort to figure out the financial issues.
“We want to make sure that we are doing all that we can to get the organization stabilized,” Mayor Paul Young said in an interview with WREG Investigators in November.
According to the contract, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers signed on in November. They agreed to dig deeper into “MATA’s cash flows and transactions” between Jan. 2019 and June 2024.
They’d conduct interviews, sift through budgets, contracts, and more. Eventually, their findings would be put into a final report, “typically less than 20 pages,” including factual observations and recommended control enhancement opportunities.
Through the Tennessee Records Act, WREG Investigators asked for that final report, so you can know what was found since MATA uses your taxpayer funds and the city spent your tax dollars on the audit.
We received a response on Friday. It stated, “The records requested are exempt from disclosure; therefore, your request is denied.” They cited a statute of the law that basically asserts attorney-client privilege.
The same excuse that council members and the city attorney gave in April and in June when MATA’s finances came up during committee meetings.
Page three of the PricewaterhouseCoopers’ contract noted, “Services performed under this Agreement do not include the provision of legal advice and the Consultant makes no representations regarding questions of legal interpretation.”
We asked the city for more clarification as to why the report falls under attorney-client privilege and why it can’t be released.
We received this response Monday, “The legal team is currently reviewing our inquiry and will respond as soon as possible.”
WREG Investigators will keep digging.
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