Oakland spent roughly $330 million on capital improvement projects — buildings, roads, sewers, and traffic lights — from mid-2022 through mid-2025, but a new city audit finds the oversight behind that spending has been full of holes. City Auditor Michael Houston’s report points to staff vacancies, slow contractor payments, missing bond audits, and no long-term capital plan since fiscal year 2022-2023.
The findings, first detailed by The Oaklandside, describe a construction management division where roughly half of civil engineer positions have sat vacant for the past three fiscal years, forcing the city into dual-role arrangements it otherwise wouldn’t use. Houston’s office warns those dual roles can mean less oversight, staff overreliance, and potential conflicts of interest. The city spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on this kind of work, according to the same report.
Payment delays traced back to staff vacancies, holdups in getting permission to withdraw bond funds, and the invoice-submission process itself. On average, the city took 47 days to process audited capital-project invoices — and on one project, those delays cost Oakland $66,000 in interest payments. In another instance, city staff charged a transportation payment to a fund that was restricted for sewer work.
Bond Audits Still Missing
Houston’s report confirms Oakland has not conducted the mandatory audits of Measure KK and Measure U funds — the same gap the Alameda County Civil Grand Jury flagged in its June 2024 report, which found the city’s precarious financial state had prevented it from issuing infrastructure bonds in 2024. Oakland’s Measure KK and the $850 million Measure U, approved in November 2022, were followed by the city resuming sales of municipal debt in December 2025, issuing $285 million in Measure U bonds for transportation, park, and housing projects after a two-year pause tied to budget deficit concerns, per The Oaklandside…