Thompson's Ghost Garbage Audit

Comptroller Bill Thompson, also a likely mayoral candidate, announced the findings of yet another audit this morning--his office reports that the city sanitation department paid workers to remove garbage from vacant lots owned by the city, but that those lots were already clean.

‘In the end, I hope we’re not dealing with fraud here,” he said at a press conference. “Oversight [of this program] is practically nonexistent."

Thompson said he doesn’t accept the department’s explanation that, in some cases, there was garbage around the lots that his auditors missed.