The San Diego Association of Governments’ internal auditor, whose damning reports have exposed major policy problems and drawn scrutiny on current leadership, is retiring—and she may be the agency’s last in-house watchdog.
SANDAG board leaders are considering replacing Independent Performance Auditor Mary Khoshmashrab with outside consultants when she leaves later this year. It’s also a move that could keep her office’s oversight function hanging in the balance—and one that has left members of Khoshmashrab’s five-person team with unanswered questions on whether they’ll still have jobs.
With a $1 billion annual budget, SANDAG is a taxpayer-funded planning agency that helps make transportation and other long-term regional decisions in the San Diego area. Since Khoshmashrab joined the agency in 2019, her audits have revealed improper severance payments, employee credit card misuse, and millions of dollars worth of increases to consultant contracts with little documentation. Her office also found the agency lost $1.8 million in revenue while it knowingly left malfunctioning equipment along its State Route 125 toll road.