Wouldn't an audit just increase costs even more? It usually goes like: let's audit the cost, then let's create a committee to explore why the audit we just did cost so much.
Googling pulls up a stat that 4000 people are incarcerated in NYC. If you could spend 1.9 million dollars and reduce expenses for a year by 1%, that pays for itself in the first year. At that scale and cost, any efficiencies pay for themselves fairly quickly.