Council approves PRIMA rollout but orders frequent progress reports after LAPD raises accounting concerns

The Los Angeles City Council approved a motion to advance the PRIMA (SMS) procurement and inventory rollout while requiring regular updates to the Government Efficiency Committee about outstanding technical issues raised by the Los Angeles Police Department and controller staff.

Councilmember Jackie Goldberg opened discussion by asking how PRIMA-related changes intersected with previously reported Government Efficiency Committee (GEC) issues. "There have been some issues with LAPD because the changes being asked for put processes in the system that are extremely different from what LAPD does now," Goldberg said, noting the department's internal controls complicate integration.

Robert Jensen, PRIMA program manager in the Department of General Services, told the council the system was designed for department-level budget control consistent with requirements gathered two years earlier. "The way we've designed the SMS system and the interfaces with the financial management information system is to do budget control of the issuance of purchase orders at the department level," Jensen said. He cautioned that permitting budget checking at LAPD divisional level would be a "major impact, a major delay." Jensen added: "If we're talking about tracking expense at a divisional level for the LAPD, there really is limited impact on the SMS system, and we can go live as originally planned. If we're talking about making major changes ... there will be a major impact, a major delay."

Ray Hall, commanding officer for LAPD fiscal operations, told council members the police department faces a dramatic change because PRIMA requires accounting for each delivery; that is new for many end users and will require staff to perform warehouse and accounting tasks previously handled elsewhere. "The entire accounting delivery, material delivery environment within the police department is changing dramatically," Hall said, though he said LAPD supported the PRIMA concept overall.

Councilmember Sheila Kuehl (referred to as "Chick" in the transcript) asked staff to provide biweekly status reports to the Government Efficiency Committee on the controller–LAPD discussions and any required FMIS modifications. "I would ask that that come to government efficiency committee at its August 7 meeting," she said; the chair's request for biweekly updates was accepted without objection.

The council approved the Budget and Finance Committee recommendation on PRIMA implementation and recorded the decision to proceed while monitoring impacts to LAPD operations. The vote on the motion was 13 ayes.

Ending: Staff were directed to continue parallel testing and to coordinate with the controller and LAPD, and to return progress reports to the Government Efficiency Committee every two weeks while issues around divisional budget control are resolved.