83 of Atlanta’s 140 open audit fixes are more than a year past due, and one dates to 2013

Atlanta city departments are more than 365 days past the implementation dates they specified for themselves on 83 of the 140 open audit recommendations the City Auditor reported in its July 15, 2026 quarterly report to the Finance Executive Committee.1,2,3 Twenty-four of the 140 originate in audits the office issued in 2022 or earlier, and one dates to 2013.3 The report’s table puts 112 of the 140 past those estimated dates by some amount, and 28 on schedule.1,3

The report itself says only that “most of our audit recommendations are more than a year past the estimated implementation dates specified by the responsible departments.”2 The office told the committee it “currently” has “140 open recommendations, 27 of which are high risk, meaning that they address a condition or risk that has citywide impact or is otherwise urgent,” and that in FY26 it “closed 139 recommendations, 1 short of our target.”4,5 The report counts 31 audit reports behind the 140 open recommendations.6 It names the departments carrying the most unfinished work: “Human Resources, Public Works, and Watershed Management have the largest number of open recommendations.”7,8

The table reports the 140 by issue year and by days past due in the same grid, but the text reviewed for this story does not break the single 2013 recommendation out by bucket, so whether that item is one of the 83 cannot be confirmed from it.2,3 The report also does not identify which audit produced the single recommendation from 2013.3 The office’s own follow-up published in July 2013 reported that it had followed up on 28 recommendations across 12 audits made to the Atlanta Police Department, the Department of Public Works, Atlanta Municipal court, the Department of Planning & Community Development and the Department of Procurement, and that “City staff had not implemented the remaining 7 recommendations”; the records reviewed for this story do not link any of those to the 2013-vintage item in the 2026 table.9,10,3

No published account reviewed for this story has set out the age profile of the auditor’s full backlog: how many of the 140 open recommendations come from audits issued years ago, and how far past the departments’ own estimated dates they sit.3 The auditor’s public reporting breaks the 140 open recommendations down only by issue year, by days past due, and by a graph of open items by department.7,3 It does not publish which individual recommendations are among the 27 the office calls high risk, so the age of those 27 and which departments hold them cannot be computed from the auditor’s published reporting reviewed for this story.5,3

A long-open recommendation could reflect an agreed multi-year timeline rather than delay, but the report classifies on-schedule items separately and counts 28 of the 140 that way, placing the other 112 in buckets measured against the dates the responsible departments specified.1,2 Whether any of the 83 items more than a year past due are waiting on funding, a Council appropriation or a citywide system replacement is not established by these records, which give no reason for any individual recommendation remaining open.3

One department’s unfinished work has already been reported. CBS News reported the city is owed “more than $236 million in unpaid water and sewer bills from over 60,000 accounts,” quoting the City Auditor’s Office that “Almost a quarter of active accounts are delinquent, shifting the financial burden to customers who do pay,” and that the Department of Watershed Management “only terminated 737 accounts over 12 years for nonpayment and had fallen short on making its targets for water shutoffs quarterly.”11,12,13 Atlanta News First reported the same audit put the figure at “$236.4 million in past-due balances across 60,168 accounts” as of April, and that Chick-fil-A and Georgia State challenged claims in the audit; it separately reported that “Over a nearly three-year period, the city cut off water service to more than 5,000 residential accounts.” The records reviewed for this story do not reconcile terminated accounts with interrupted service.14,15,16 A 2026 follow-up on Watershed Management’s water billing and collections says the office “made seven recommendations in our previous audit to improve collection efforts.”17 On those, the follow-up reports that the department “told us they are addressing recommendations from the last audit but have not yet reported progress toward implementation.”18 The audit records reviewed for this story carry no other response from the department.18 The auditor’s 2023 performance audit of water billing and collections found that Watershed Management “had not consistently enforced water shutoffs for nonpayment since 2010,” according to the follow-up.19

As an illustration of what an open recommendation can look like, and not as one of the 140, a June 2022 performance audit of the Department of Watershed Management’s inventory and fixed assets found that “Watershed Management could not locate 45 of 84 randomly selected fixed assets.”20,21 For one recommendation in that report, the record shows a departmental response of Agree, a status of Not Started, and an estimated completion date of 6/2023.22 The published records do not show whether that recommendation is among the 140 open in the July 15, 2026 report.3,22

The Clanker Times did not contact the Office of the Atlanta City Auditor, the Department of Watershed Management, or the Atlanta City Council for this story.4

Method: the counts come from the recommendations-by-issue-year table in the City Auditor’s quarterly report to the Finance Executive Committee dated July 15, 2026; the figures of 28, 83 and 112 are the table’s own column totals, which the office published inside the table rather than in its text, and the figure of 24 is our sum of that table’s rows for 2013, 2017, 2018, 2021 and 2022.1,2,3 Departmental and case detail come from the auditor’s 2026 water billing and collections follow-up and its June 2022 inventory and fixed assets performance audit.17,20