State inspectors have identified more than $15 million in questionable costs from homeland security grants spent in California, an investigation by California Watch has found.
Using the state’s open-records laws, the investigative unit started this year by the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting found scores of instances of wasteful spending, purchasing violations, error-prone accounting and shoddy oversight at agencies across the state during the years immediately following 9/11.
Officials in Los Angeles County spent $20,000 on a Chevrolet Monte Carlo, $1,500 on a shotgun safe from the "Homeland Security Safe Co." and $3,558 on 70 replica firearms, none of which were permitted under grant guidelines.
Spokesman Ken Kondo of the county’s Office of Emergency Management said local authorities approved the vehicle – a sport coupe used by the sheriff’s terrorism unit. Inspectors, however, considered it to be an inappropriate use of homeland security funds.
When something became disallowed, the state didn’t want the money back," Kondo said. "They wanted us to spend it on something else that is allowable."
The questionable spending showed up in thousands of pages of documents from 160 monitoring reports written by state homeland security officials who visited cities and counties across California to inspect equipment and grant records for compliance with federal guidelines.
Marin County received more than $100,000 in surveillance equipment to keep its water treatment system safe from a terrorist attack. But four years after the funds were awarded, state authorities found more than $67,000 worth of the gear still boxed in its original packaging. It had never been used.
One Northern California county sought reimbursement for a $321 Toro lawn mower, records show. Another bought a 40-inch, $2,300 plasma TV.
Dozens of cities and agencies failed to keep adequate records on how they spent the money. In some cases, the poor record keeping resulted in thousands of dollars worth of overpayments to local agencies. In other cases, agencies were unable to find where they stored their own equipment.
The chaos that surrounded homeland security grant spending in California raises new questions about safeguards as Washington proceeds to directly hand the state and those same communities an estimated $465.2 million in economic stimulus funds for public safety programs as part of President Obama’s attempt to save the nation’s beleaguered economy.
Government auditors say that even now, eight years after the terrorist attacks, the Department of Homeland Security can’t gauge how much the grants have made America safer. Local officials and other experts, meanwhile, worry a lack of oversight could lead to the same types of mistakes with the stimulus package that plagued anti-terrorism funding.
"The guidance we get from Sacramento is not always clear on what we’re supposed to do," said Tony Richno, deputy director of the Modoc County Office of Emergency Services. "It’s very difficult to comply and sometimes the rules are unreasonable. But we accepted the money and knew what we were getting into."
Brendan Murphy, director of grants management for the California Emergency Management Agency, said several areas of the state have improved their handling of federal funds. He said that site inspections done by his office are resulting in fewer negative findings.
"You see communities that might have been struggling a few years ago," Murphy said. "They’re not struggling anymore, or are at least doing better."
Many grant beneficiaries had no problems managing the money they received and met the expectations of regulators. State inspectors reviewed about $550 million in spending and found that much of it was spent properly. Other agencies didn’t fare as well.
The mayor’s office in Los Angeles transferred $661,439 worth of grant funds to the county sheriff during 2006 for a 44-foot fast-response boat with a kitchenette and mount capable of holding an M60 machine gun. But the city didn’t receive prior authorization from the state or the Department of Homeland Security to do so. The paperwork was completed after monitors discovered the boat, records show.
Some purchases made by communities across California elicited complaints about wasteful spending that became national news. A number of cities and counties bought Segway scooters for their bomb squads. State records show that Sonoma County upgraded to the Segway x2, outfitted with all-terrain tires, oversized fenders and a trailer hitch. The x2, according to product literature, "can master intimidating patches of dirt, gravel, grass, or sand." The Segway cost $4,700.
Grant applications filled out by local officials are supposed to reflect the area’s actual needs. But inspectors found paperwork in Los Angeles County that showed endless changes to how they’d originally promised to spend the money. For three grants totaling nearly $70 million in spending, the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management made at least 392 modifications in just one year. Many such changes were done without approval from grant overseers in Sacramento.
That meant the county "did not have sound investment justifications, therefore they did not meet their homeland security goals and objectives," monitoring records from July 2007 show. At the time of the inspection, the county also for two years hadn’t inventoried the huge volume of equipment it bought, didn’t know where some of it was located and wasn’t sure who to call to find out.
Officials in Los Angeles responded that the slightest change counted against them as a "modification," even for such things as having funds left over. The emergency management office’s director, John Fernandes, said the county is responsible for purchases made by dozens of cities and special districts in the area. They’re all now required to compile full inventory logs.
"Without question taxpayers should be secure that not a dime is being spent without checks and balances," he said. "But if you’re talking to the fire chief or emergency manager, they’re going to say ‘What’s taking so long?’ It’s a painstaking process because of what goes into it."
California Watch is a new reporting unit of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting. Last year, CIR began examining the effectiveness of America’s homeland security efforts in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity. To read the full-length version of this go to www.californiawatch.org.
