The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a public hearing Tuesday, June 10, to examine grant-making practices at the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).
Among other items, the committee will look into whether OJJDP bypassed high-scoring bids in order to award competitive grants last year to organizations favored by agency administrators.
OJJDP Administrator Robert J. Flores is scheduled to testify.
Several current and former Justice Department staffers traveled to Capitol Hill this week to be interviewed by committee staffers in preparation for the hearing, according to people involved in the proceeding. The investigation was prompted by reports in Youth Today.
The investigation, in turn, has spurred rumors that Flores is leaving OJJDP.
Asked about those rumors at an OJJDP event in Washington on Thursday, Flores laughed and said, "I'm very happy" in his current job.
The committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), has asked the Justice Department for documents relating to all grant-making by OJJDP for fiscal 2007. Among the documents the committee requested:
• A list of all applicants for discretionary grants, the proposed funding amount, whether the application was subject to an external peer review, the applicant's evaluation scores and the amount funded, if any.
• All documents related to the award of discretionary grants in 2007, including applications, records and notes from bidders' technical evaluations, agency decision memoranda, and communications within OJJDP and between OJJDP officials and "any outside entity."
• All communications from Flores "relating to all grants considered for awards."
• Justice Department and OJJDP policies governing the grant competition and awards process.
1 comment:
Bushites only give to other Bushites?
LOL
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