Posted on 11/06/2013 1:48:19 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Failing to heed the lessons of the Solyndra debacle, Energy Department officials kept quiet about their knowledge that a government-backed electric car charger company was sliding toward bankruptcy and putting taxpayer money at risk, the agency’s chief watchdog has found.
Inspector General Greg Friedman admonished department officials for failing to disclose during an audit this summer what they knew about San Francisco-based Ecotality’s financial troubles and the possibility that the firm might not meet the terms of its taxpayer funding. The company received $100 million in aid from the 2009 stimulus.
“We are deeply concerned because the information directly related to the objective of our audit, to determine whether the Department had effectively awarded and managed funding to Ecotality,” the watchdog wrote in a report with eerie overtures from the Solyndra solar failure.
Tuesday’s report marked the latest black eye for President Obama’s much-ballyhooed strategy to use the 2009 stimulus to fund clean-energy projects,many of which have failed.
One such example is the Solyndra solar company,which fell into bankruptcy after receiving government money. In September 2011, Solyndra filed for bankruptcy, despite receiving $535 million from the Energy Department. Much of that money will be lost to taxpayers, officials have acknowledged,and the administration promised after that high-visibility failure to do a better job tracking grant recipients that are in financial trouble.
Ecotality received $135 million in total funding from the federal government over the past eight years, including $35 million for two projects that were approved in 2005 and 2011,and a $100 million grant from the Obama administration’s Recovery Act, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which gave a boost to energy-efficient companies.
Ecotality filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Sept.16, but officials at the Energy Department failed to give the inspector general notice in the months leading up to the bankruptcy...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Just a general question for the audience....but is there any ‘green’ energy company created since 2007...that is considered a success? I’m not talking Chinese or German green...but plain ole US green. Any? It would seem like this is the most fake industry in the United States.
Institutionalized corruption. Does anyone really wonder how it was so effortless for the Obama campaign to raise $1 billion for its 2012 campaign?
I wonder how many other “green energy” firm’s financial failings are being kept quite (as long as possible) to keep money flowing through their books and back to Democrats.
Bump!
So we get another report and eyewash statements to do better. This is of no consequence unless people are fired and go to jail. The IG just gives a veneer of respectability to continued corruption.
Has one single green executive, upper/middle/lower management person been charged with anything other than a buried news story about their failures since 2009?
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