Houston’s hiring audit found gaps in records documenting whether new employees were approved, evaluated or screened before they were hired. Auditors also found 72 former city workers still had active accounts in the online hiring system. The findings concern records auditors could not produce; they do not establish that paperwork was deliberately skipped.
The audit examined roughly 12,000 non-uniformed city employees hired from fiscal year 2023 through the third quarter of fiscal year 2026, according to CW39 Houston. Its findings also point to a fragmented policy framework: hiring requirements are spread across roughly 20 policies and administrative procedures rather than set out in one citywide process.
How the audit’s scope differs from police and fire hiring
The City of Houston’s Municipal Employee Guidebook says it applies to municipal employees and generally not to police officers or firefighters, a distinction relevant to the audit’s focus on non-uniformed employees. The guidebook establishes that difference in scope but does not, by itself, detail the specific civil-service protections or all the rules governing other municipal employees. The City of Houston Human Resources Department says its Classified Testing division supports hiring and promotional processes in the Fire and Police departments. The city’s materials identify a separate role for classified testing in those departments, but do not provide a full comparison of their hiring procedures with those for other municipal employees.
The missing control record
In the hires tested, auditors could not find an approved authorization to fill the position in 83% of cases. In 97%, they found no approved scoring plan documenting how candidates were compared, according to CW39.
The audit also found gaps in records for screening and qualifications. More than half of the hires reviewed lacked paperwork showing that minimum qualifications had been checked, while background-check documentation was unavailable in 47% of cases, CW39 reported.
Rules without a single procedure
Houston’s hiring requirements are distributed across roughly 20 policies and administrative procedures, but none clearly sets out the documentation required at each stage, CW39 reported. The city has no unified, citywide hiring procedure, leaving departments to work from a collection of rules.
The audit also examined posting waivers, which are intended to allow faster hiring for executive positions without a public job posting. Of 906 hires made using waivers, 752 — or 83% — were for non-executive positions, according to CW39.
Former employees retained system access
Auditors found that 72 former city employees still had active accounts in the online hiring system. The audit findings as reported do not specify how long the access remained active or whether anyone misused it.
A separate audit also flagged access records
A July 30, 2024, audit presentation from the City of Houston Office of the City Controller reported no documentation that user access had been terminated for people no longer with HCDD or the city. That finding concerned the Homeowner Assistance Program, not the hiring system, and reported a lack of documentation rather than establishing when access was removed.
What Houston plans to change
Houston Human Resources agreed with the audit’s findings and committed to corrective actions by June 2027. The department plans to combine the scattered hiring rules into one procedure, clarify approval and documentation requirements at each stage, and review access to the hiring system.
Those steps remain commitments, not completed fixes. The findings reported by CW39 Houston document records the city could not produce; the promised changes are intended to establish clearer procedures and oversight going forward.
