New York state, city officials mismanaged millions in anti-terror grants: DHS IG
Published 6 July 2015
A new report from DHS Inspector General found that New York City and the state of New York have mismanaged millions of dollars in federal grants meant to help improve homeland security. DHS IG found that New York officials spent nearly 10 percent – or $67 million of the $725 million granted during three years by the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) — on questionable costs not in line with homeland security goals or strategies.
A new report from DHS Inspector General found that New York City and the state of New York have mismanaged millions of dollars in federal grants meant to help improve homeland security.
DHS IG found that New York officials spent nearly 10 percent – or $67 million of the $725 million granted during three years by the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) — on questionable costs not in line with homeland security goals or strategies. The Washington Times reports that in some cases, officials failed to implement security improvements, carry out agreements, or track progress.
“It is obscene that Michael Bloomberg’s New York City government failed to ensure that millions of dollars in Department of Homeland Security grants were actually being spent to protect the city. It is particularly astonishing that this occurred in New York City, which one would expect to be hypersensitive about the proper, effective spending of funds provided to prevent terrorism,” Richard Manning, president of the conservative think tank Americans for Limited Government, told the Times.
“The New York City government’s cavalier attitude toward ensuring that their chosen subcontractors are wisely spending federal taxpayer homeland security monies to protect the public’s safety is almost unfathomable,” Manning added.
HNGN reports that the DHS IG office, after reviewing twenty-three subgrants which New York granted to state counties, found that none of the twenty-three grants was administered within the 45-day time limit required by FEMA. It sometime took as many as 670 days after the deadline to issue the funds.
The IG report says that excessive red-tape is responsible for the delays, noting that “delays in obligating funds to subgrantees may be attributed to both the state and the subgrantees having to obtain several levels of approval before funds were obligated.”
After funds were handed out, there were no management controls and monitoring in place to make sure that the funds were used correctly, according to the Times.
DHS IG also found significant overtime payments which had nothing to do with counterterrorism missions.
— Read more inNew York’s Management of Homeland Security Grant Program Awards for Fiscal Years 2010-12, OIG-15-107 (Office of Inspector General, Department of Homeland Security, 19 June 2015)
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