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When Patrice Randle was first hired as Fort Worth’s city auditor in 2013, her goal was to build trust and add value to Fort Worth governance. Today, she says one of her biggest accomplishments from a more than 35-year career has been establishing credibility in her department and proving herself and her staff as reliable and trustworthy. (Ella Scott-Dean | Fort Worth Report)

Cowtown’s Next Chapter is an introduction to the Fort Worth staff managing city resources, launching community-serving programs and spearheading change across the city. The series spotlights the new faces leading city initiatives and explores their visions for their roles and department priorities.Twelve years later, city officials and audit staff continue to describe her as credible, capable and “consummate” — a large part of why she was hired again as city auditor in 2024. After serving as city auditor from 2013 to 2021, Randle retired and launched her own audit consulting firm, Randle Consulting. Three years later, she returned after the sudden departure of her successor. Although unplanned, Randle’s return to the audit department was a happy one, she said. “I enjoyed my stay at the city of Fort Worth. It wasn’t that I left because I was not satisfied,” Randle said. “I enjoyed what I was doing, so I had no problem returning and contributing to the efforts of the mayor and council as well as the city manager’s office.”Randle earns $215,013.76 annually, according to data provided by the city’s human resources department. She is responsible for conducting various types of internal audits to identify inefficiencies and risks and ensure compliance with applicable laws and guidelines. The department audits all city departments based on risk assessments and in accordance with the city’s annual audit plan, which is approved by the City Council. In 2025, for example, audit staff plan to examine how the city sets goals for hiring minority and women-owned businesses in its contracts, how municipal court cases are processed and how the city responds to homelessness, among other issues, according to the city’s FY 2025 audit plan. Randle brings decades of experience to the role, having held internal auditing positions in the cities of Dallas, Arlington and Irving, as well as for Dallas Area Rapid Transit. She grew up in the small town of Buffalo, about two hours southeast of Cowtown, and now lives in Fort Worth with her 20-year-old son, Kendall, who she calls her best friend. Randle returns amid controversy, turnover in audit departmentAfter Randle retired in December 2021, City Council members hired Peter Medrano, an internal auditor from California, as her replacement in August 2022. Medrano resigned less than two years later, alleging that he had been the victim of “unjustified adverse employment actions,” including the denial of an annual salary increase that was given to other council-appointed staff, disciplinary probation action and changes in his job assignment, according to his January 2024 resignation letter. City auditor is one of four positions hired by the City Council, in addition to city manager, city attorney and city secretary. Unlike most city staff, the city auditor reports directly to the mayor and council members rather than the city manager. After Medrano’s resignation, the city tapped Randle to serve as interim city auditor while council members launched a national search to find a permanent hire. “I did not know (Medrano) professionally or personally, and the only thing that I was made aware of when I came back to serve as interim was that he had resigned,” Randle said. “I never asked what the details were surrounding his departure.” While serving as interim city auditor, Randle saw an opportunity for growth. She said she returned to a department that had experienced “substantial turnover” in the three years she’d been gone, leaving a void of institutional knowledge.“The department was less knowledgeable. You lost a lot of institutional knowledge by losing the staff,” Randle said. “I came back to a department that was less knowledgeable of not only city of Fort Worth operations, but they were not knowledgeable of the public sector and operations.” Council member Carlos Flores, who serves as vice chair of the council’s audit committee, said Randle’s extensive prior experience with the audit department and understanding of how it’s intended to function were some of the factors that attracted the council to hire her permanently once again. That knowledge, paired with her efficient work style, made her a perfect fit, he said. “She has a very good understanding of the department and its inner workings and how it’s supposed to work,” Flores said. “And she knows many of the employees, and she’s able to work very effectively with them.” District 2 council member Carlos Flores attends a council meeting on May 21, 2024, at City Hall. (Camilo Diaz | Fort Worth Report) Randle plans to mentor young staff, work on efficiencyAudit manager Vanessa Martinez, who was hired under Randle’s direction and has worked for the city for nearly a decade, described working with Randle as a “very rewarding experience.” She is one of around 15 employees who work under Randle in the audit department. “I have learned very much from Patrice. She was a mentor for me from day one,” Martinez said. She, since I met her, was very willing to teach, and I’ve always enjoyed learning from her.”Martinez started her career with the city as an entry-level internal auditor before working her way up to the role of senior auditor and eventually the manager position she currently holds. She credits her career growth in part to Randle’s mentorship. Martinez recalled her first big project as an internal auditor. Randle was by her side throughout the process and guided her each step of the way. Having new and inexperienced audit staff learning from Randle today is invaluable, she added. “Seeing her lead has been inspiring — she leads by example in ethical behavior, which of course, is what you want from your internal audit department: ethical behavior, integrity and hard work,” Martinez said. “She sets that example for us, and she’s dedicated to helping the city and providing value.”Flores, the council member, said Randle has already delivered on one of his goals for her department, which was to audit the many staff vacancies, especially long-standing ones, within Fort Worth government. He said she conducted the audit in a timely manner and delivered an action plan to address the issue. “What I appreciate about how she works is that she’s able to execute very efficiently on goals,” Flores said. “She sets goals … and executes them in a timely fashion. So I like that about her.”While her short-term goal is to bring staff up to speed, Randle said one long-term department goal is to focus more on data analysis in an effort to be more effective at identifying inefficiencies. The department has various routine audits to conduct, but having staff specifically dedicated to analyzing data would help the department become more proactive, she noted. In the meantime, Randle said she’s proud of the mentorship she’s been able to provide Martinez and other entry-level staff — and happy to see it pay off with their promotions and career growth. She wants to continue training and mentoring inexperienced auditors, which she sees as one way to pay back the mentorship she received early in her career. “I believe in developing auditors because I was developed as an entry-level auditor. So when I came in as interim, I saw inexperienced auditors who had a desire to become, maybe, future city auditors,” Randle said. “And so I saw a need for me to help develop them. And in developing them, that in itself, would have the internal audit function as a city, and it would serve the objective of the internal audit function, which is to add value.” Patrice Randle’s relevant experience

Work: 

2024-present: Fort Worth’s city auditor

2022-2024: President of her own audit consulting firm, Randle Consulting LLC

2013-2021: Fort Worth’s city auditor

2006-2013: Arlington’s city auditor

1995-2006: Held accounting and auditing roles for the city of Irving

1993-1994: Senior internal auditor for Dallas Area Rapid Transit

1988-1993: Held contract compliance and auditing roles for the city of Dallas

Education: 

Bachelor’s degrees in business administration and accounting from Sam Houston State UniversityGovernment accountability reporter Emily Wolf contributed to this story. Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org or @bycecilialenzen. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.