The 2009 mayoral election wasn't much of a contest, with Mayor R.T. Rybak winning some 73 percent of the vote. But one issue raised by the also-rans gained some traction. That was the city's lack of an internal auditor, caused by the retirement that year of the lone person holding the job. It took the city almost until the end of 2010 to staff up to the minimum of three auditors recommended by a team of outside auditors and adopt a work plan for them. But now Mayor R.T. Rybak wants to cut one of those auditors as part of the citywide budget tightening that allows him to propose no property tax increase. That's a move that could hand the issue to his 2013 opponents, should he run again. The auditor post Rybak proposes cutting emerged as a candidate for the budget ax because it showed up on a list of vacant city positions as Rybak was crafting his budget, according to aide Peter Wagenius. It was vacant because one newly hired auditor moved to another job within the city. "That was a painful cut to make," Wagenius said. It also conflicts with Rybak's rhetoric when the council approved a revamped audit function in 2009: "Making City government more transparent and making it easier for residents to hold us accountable — and for us to hold ourselves accountable — by strengthening our audit function is absolutely the right thing to do." Keep in mind that the auditor issue has played out against a backdrop in 2009 of the effort by City Hall to abolish the city's Board of Estimate and Taxation and give its powers to set the maximum levy, sell bonds and oversee audits to the City Council. Voters rejected that in a charter referendum in which board member Carol Becker, something of a bête noire for Rybak in recent years, led the opposition. Some critics saw the plan to shift the internal audit function by ordinance from the board to a new Audit Committee as an end run around voter will. But the new committee at least had three outsiders on it. One of them, Rybak appointee Stephanie Woodruff, is the vice-chair of the audit committee. She minced no words on the harm she sees in a reduced audit staff. "I believe this reduction would open the city to more risk," she told the Council's budget committee on Tuesday. The committee will recommend a budget early next month.