San Diego residents currently face a 340-day average wait time for municipal streetlight repairs, a crisis laid bare by a blistering new city audit that points directly to operational dysfunction and slack employee oversight.
Weak Oversight and Parked City Crews
The 56-page performance audit released by City Auditor Andy Hanau exposes deep operational fractures inside San Diego’s Transportation Department. According to the report, the city’s backlog of broken streetlights has swollen to roughly 7,000 pending repairs. Investigators uncovered extensive evidence that some city electricians exploited lax supervision to claim unwarranted overtime or sit idle during work hours. Investigators flagged two municipal electricians who spent 198 hours—the equivalent of 25 workdays—parked at sites where no documented repairs took place.
Mayor Todd Gloria voiced stark frustration over the findings. “I’m furious about what this audit found, particularly the evidence that city time and taxpayer resources may have been misused by a few city employees,” Gloria said. In response to the revelations, city administrators swiftly overhauled internal rules last week, implementing a rigorous new overtime policy that demands far more documentation and details for any field worker called back after regular shifts.
The Policy Shift That Tripled the Backlog
Investigators point to a pivotal administrative decision made in February 2025 as a factor in the maintenance crisis. City leadership directed the municipality’s 18 full-time streetlight electricians to put a distinct state-mandated obligation ahead of standard duties. State regulations under the “Before You Dig” initiative mandate that municipalities supply an electrician on-site whenever utility providers, telecommunication firms, or real estate developers initiate excavation work.
During the period spanning from February 2025 to October 2025, staff electricians were directed to direct their attention exclusively toward “Before You Dig” tickets and critical hazards like bare live wires, setting aside standard lighting outages. According to the audit’s findings, this choice fueled a dramatic surge in pending streetlight repairs, causing the backlog to swell nearly threefold from 2,684 cases in fiscal 2021 up to 7,552 over the summer.
Between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2026, total expenditures on labor climbed from $2.3 million to $5.7 million, while overtime spending jumped from $230,000 to $1.4 million.
A Clash Between Auditors and City Hall
Despite committing to adopt all 12 of the report’s suggested reforms, municipal leaders pushed back against the findings using unusually harsh terms and stood by their current oversight and repair strategies. They argue the review relied on broad presumptions regarding daily labor and handpicked specific metrics to cast the municipality and its Transportation Department in the most damaging light possible.
City Auditor Andy Hanau said Monday that the audit raises major concerns. “There is extensive evidence of significant operational inefficiencies and a lack of accountability within the program,” Hanau said Monday.
Given that studies highlighted in the audit consistently demonstrate how proper illumination helps lower crime rates, curb traffic accidents and nighttime crashes, and boost feelings of community security, keeping streetlights operational is essential for public safety.
