Posted on 03/09/2005 5:43:18 PM PST by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO (AP) - In a report triggered by questionable campaign donations to Kevin Shelley, the controller's office said Wednesday it found serious weaknesses in the Department of Parks and Recreation's handing of state grants for local projects.
The office's auditors looked at recipients of 20 grants totaling $14.26 million and questioned $1.11 million of the expenditures. In some cases the money wasn't spent for the intended reason, and in one instance bank records indicated some of it went for "personal purposes," the report said.
"We believe there are serious control deficiencies in the state's system and processes for awarding and managing grants," Vincent Brown, the controller's chief operating officer, said in a letter to the department's director, Ruth Coleman. "We believe these deficiencies merit special attention."
The department agreed there were deficiencies in grant management but blamed those problems on a "vagueness and lack of guidance" in state budget legislation.
"The purpose and legislative intent of some of the grants is unclear," the department said in a statement. "State Parks believes these problems made the projects inherently more difficult to manage."
Department officials said they would review the audit's findings and determine if any of the grant funds should be "disallowed."
State Controller Steve Westly ordered the audit after news stories suggested $125,000 may have been illegally sidetracked to Shelley's 2002 campaign for secretary of state from a nearly $500,000 grant for a San Francisco community center that was never built. Shelley resigned from his post last Friday.
A spokesman for Westly, Russ Lopez, said the 20 grant recipients that were audited "appeared to be more at risk of not properly handling the money."
He said the $1.1 million may sound "like a small amount, (but) in this day and age, when California's facing a serious budget crisis, every dollar has to be used (wisely)."
In one case cited in the audit, the state gave $246,500 to the Color Me Freedom Foundation to create a Martin Luther King/Cesar Chavez Museum at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles.
The foundation spent $67,361 in 2001 to buy a portable building to house the museum, but the portable was used for storage by the high school for the next three years.
When auditors visited the school last September some artifacts had been placed in the building, but school officials conceded they were of very limited educational value, and the building was not open to students or the public.
Auditors said bank records indicated that some of the grant was spent for "personal purposes," and the controller's office referred the case to law enforcement officials for possible prosecution.
The foundation's executive director told auditors that he had submitted adequate justifications for the grant expenditures.
The audit also found that:
- The state approved grants without having detailed information about how the money would be used.
- Some grant recipients lacked fiscal controls to make sure the money was spent for legitimate purposes.
- The state made few inspections to check on how the money was being used and recipients weren't required to make periodic progress reports.
Westly said he was backing legislation by Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla, D-Pittsburg, that would require grant recipients to provide a complete work plan laying out the project's cost and scope.
The bill would also require recipients to submit to audits, use money for only authorized purposes and return any misspent funds.
Other provisions would require a task force to develop monitoring requirements for state departments to follow when issuing grants.
"We have to make sure that every taxpayer dollar is spent wisely," Westly said. "That means cleaning up the process."
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On the Net: www.assembly.ca.gov, and www.sco.ca.gov
The foundation spent $67,361 in 2001 to buy a portable building to house the museum, but the portable was used for storage by the high school for the next three years.
When auditors visited the school last September some artifacts had been placed in the building, but school officials conceded they were of very limited educational value, and the building was not open to students or the public.
Auditors said bank records indicated that some of the grant was spent for "personal purposes," and the controller's office referred the case to law enforcement officials for possible prosecution.
The foundation's executive director told auditors that he had submitted adequate justifications for the grant expenditures.
I have had personal experience with both prop 12 and 40. They are an absolute nightmare for smaller counties and districts. The state won't pass through money to anything but a county or city or formal recreation district that has "site" control. I don't have a lot of cities and no recreation districts in my 3,000 sq. mile district. That means that they require the County to own the Park and the liability for any kid who falls.
I went through a dozen projects that were developed by local people and completely shot down over a course of a year by the State. One project to improve play equipmemnt at a park maintained by a local Community Services District would have required them to deed the land under the equipment to the County to obtain funds.
This could have brought much needed assistance for recreation to my poorest communities of 3-500 people. In the end, the cities got the benefit and the smaller communities got deep disappointment.
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