Henry Waxman of the Oversight Committee is well known as a relentless person who follows ups and follows through on waste, fraud, and abuse investigations of taxpayers' money. On October 3, 2008 on Waxman's website, he identified contractual, environmental, and other investigations that he has identified billions in misspent or mismanaged funds. OJJDP probe of grant decision making process by OJJDP administrator J. Robert Flores is added to that list. See [PDF] Contract Report Outline. Here is Waxman's outline of the OJJDP probe:
Improper Grantmaking by the OJJDP: $4.4 million. In June 2008, the Committee investigated the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)’s grant procedures. OJJDP controls a fund of $8.6 million awarded to applicants that meet certain criteria. Career staff at OJJDP evaluate and rank order the applications. In 2007, OJJDP’s administrator ignored the advice of his staff and provided 55% of the money, or approximately $4.4 million, to applicants deemed “not recommended.” Among the awardees were a program to fund abstinence-only education run by the wife of a former Reagan cabinet member and a golf foundation that had a pre-existing relationship with the OJJDP administrator.
55% of the money or more than half or $4.4 million for grants were steered to organizations with ties to the political and religious agenda by the Bush Administration which left 45% of the money or $4.2 million of grants to be dispersed to the organization [through cherry picking] who won grants that year. This is still no word into when Waxman will have another OJJDP hearing and Inspector General's investigatiin findings into Flores. We only hope Waxman continue his investigation into waste, fraud, and cronyism by Flores. Flores played his own version of Robin Hood in his dept. with the grant decision making: Steal from the youth and give to your buddies.
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