A recall on city cars

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa clamped down on the use of city vehicles Thursday, hours after City Controller Laura Chick released a pair of scathing reports that showed city workers have been driving home city cars and fueling them on the taxpayers' dime with little oversight or accountability. Brandon Lowrey in the Daily News.

"This is a double whammy," Chick said, after calling the city's lax regulations "a joke."

"We don't have the right insurance in place, and we don't have the right rules."

The reports prompted Villaraigosa to follow many of Chick's recommendations by Thursday afternoon: He put a freeze on issuing take-home cars and he suspended purchases of most new city vehicles.