PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto is calling for a forensic audit to recreate financial records and spending by an authority the state Legislature created in 2004 to oversee the city’s then-failing finances.

Peduto called for the audit after a Pittsburgh newspaper reported that the Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority didn’t have financial records for most of its expenditures since 2010, and that the group’s executive director couldn’t locate a record of checks written between 2004 and 2009.

“You cannot operate a business by destroying your financial records,” Peduto said. “Our role isn’t to be the investigator, but we have a right to ask for the release of all the information we’ve been seeking for years.”

The authority is exempt from the state’s open records law, under the legislation that created it, said state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale. The ICA didn’t turn over many of the records requested when his office audited the ICA in November, he said.