Category: Audits

D.C. Homeless Program Overcharged

By Fredrick Kunkle. Washington Post. March 6, 2015. “An auditor’s report on the District’s programs for the homeless found that its main contractor overbilled the city by more than $5.3 million last year, largely through the use of an accounting practice that appears to be a violation of city and federal law.”

“The review also found that the contractor, the nonprofit Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, had inadequately distinguished between programmatic and administrative costs, a key indicator of whether funds are spent efficiently.”

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Dallas ISD fires another top investigator

By Matthew Haag, Dallas News, October 30, 2014

A high-ranking Dallas ISD investigator who won praise for helping clean up district problems with federal technology funding was fired Thursday, the second top investigator to be let go in recent months.

Deputy Chief Internal Auditor Don Smith was notified Thursday morning of a leadership change in the Office of Internal Audit Investigations and told he had to leave the administration building by noon.

“I did nothing wrong,” Smith told The Dallas Morning News. “I was told I did nothing wrong. I was presented with no documentation. I was told nothing. I was doing my job and never told I did anything wrong.”

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State Auditor Finds Fault With Everett’s Handling of Police Hiring Grant

September 30, 2013

The State Auditor released a finding today as a result of an audit conducted on Federal funds used to pay for police officers in the City of Everett. The finding and the city’s response are below.

The United States Department of Justice awarded the City a COPS Hiring Program grant in 2009. The City may use the funds over three years to pay the salary of entry level officers or re-assigned officers working on specific community safety programs created under the terms of the grant. In 2012 the City spent $233,461 to pay for the third year of salaries and benefits for new officers hired, although not assigned, to these specific programs.

Read the complete story here.

Audit finds federal money meant to fight crime in Atlanta misspent

Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2013
WSB-TV Atlanta

ATLANTA — Federal money meant to fight crime in the City of Atlanta was misspent and mismanaged by city leaders, according to a federal audit by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General.

Auditors said they also ran into roadblocks gaining documentation to verify where federal grant monies for the city’s Weed and Seed program was going. The objective of City of Atlanta’s Weed and Seed program, which was funded through federal grants, was to prevent and control crime in neighborhoods including Mechanicsville, Pittsburgh, English Avenue and Vine City.

“The city’s Weed and Seed director sometimes did not respond to us for weeks or provided incomplete or incorrect information. Some of our questions pertaining to a payment to a former city employee were never answered,” the federal report stated.
The City of Atlanta received $1.12 million in federal grants from 2007-2012.

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HUD audit questions Milwaukee nonprofit’s account of spending

By Georgia Pabst of the Journal Sentinel
Sept. 23, 2013

A federal audit has found that a Milwaukee nonprofit that administers a variety of programs to assist the poor and homeless did not properly administer $1.7 million in federal grants.

The audit was conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Inspector General in response to an anonymous complaint alleging misuse of grant money by Community Advocates, according to the 31-page report.

The audit, dated Sept. 17, faults the agency for not ensuring that supportive housing program money that assists the homeless was used for eligible activities. It also found that the agency did not maintain documentation to support the required matching contributions.

The agency also failed to maintain a financial management system that separately tracked the source and use of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds and lacked sufficient documentation to support the allocation of operating costs, the audit said.

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Lowell Housing Authority barred from no-bid union labor

Audit revealed failure to seek cost estimates
By Lyle Moran, 09/22/2013

LOWELL — The federal government has barred the Lowell Housing Authority from performing construction projects with no-bid union labor, known as force-account labor, for the foreseeable future.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development told the LHA that it had to stop using federal capital funds on force-account labor projects due to findings in an audit completed by HUD’s Office of the Inspector General.

In the audit released publicly in early September, HUD’s inspector general found the LHA failed to seek cost estimates or keep detailed records so it could not ensure that more than $9.2 million spent on 14 force-account projects from 2008 to 2012 was cost-effective.

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City out of compliance with federal law for second straight year

by KEVAN MOORE, Bremerton Patriot Staff Writer
Sep 18, 2013

The City of Bremerton is set to be slapped with two findings by the Washington State Auditor’s Office.

For the second year in a row, the city failed to comply with the Davis-Bacon Act, a federal law designed to ensure laborers are paid prevailing wages while working on public projects.

In addition, state auditors found that the city’s Community Development Block Grant program was not administered properly. Specifically, four of the seven loans that auditors looked at no longer qualified to be deferred and the city should have collected $23,120. Those loans included two to a borrower who passed away in 1997 and one involving a home that was sold in 2008.

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