Institute on WCIA 3: Grant monitoring virtually non-existent

Illinois Policy Institute Executive Vice President, Kristina Rasmussen, joined WCIA-3‘s Steve Staeger to discuss the lack of grant monitoring in Illinois. Almost half the state’s budget goes to grants. Some go to smaller government bodies, others to non-profits. The money is supposed to be spent on good causes, things to help people. But, in recent...

Illinois Policy Institute Executive Vice President, Kristina Rasmussen, joined WCIA-3‘s Steve Staeger to discuss the lack of grant monitoring in Illinois.

Almost half the state’s budget goes to grants. Some go to smaller government bodies, others to non-profits. The money is supposed to be spent on good causes, things to help people. But, in recent years, some people have used grants to help themselves. WCIA-3’s Steve Staeger investigates how grants are monitored because You Paid for It.

When two Chicago-area nurses asked for state grants a few years ago, the cause seemed like a good one. Both were part of the Chicago chapter of teh National Black Nurses Association. They got their hands on more than $1 million in grants from several state agencies.

The money was supposed to be used on advocacy causes, but in the end, it went to line the pockets of those nurses. Last month, the former head of the organization pleaded guilty to 14 federal charges ranging from mail fraud to money laundering.

According to an indictment, Margaret Davis steered close to $1 million of those grants to herself. It’s money that was spent on her mortgage, credit card bills and other personal expenses. The nurse who helped her pleaded guilty to one count, taking close to $100,000.

“The state spends billions of taxpayer dollars basically handing out money to private organizations and we don’t always know how that money is being spent.”

Kristina Rasmussen, with the Illinois Policy Institute, says the group has questioned the state’s grant monitoring process in the past.

“In our experience, grant reporting is spotty and inconsistent across agencies. A look at a recent audit of one state agency seems to show that. The Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity is one of the biggest grant givers in the state. The department gives out about 90-percent of its budget.”

But, an audit found several flaws with DCEO’s monitoring system. For example, the department doesn’t visit the site of some grants. It also accepted some financial reports without proper signatures and didn’t monitor some grants beyond looking at quarterly reports.

“Best practices include on-site visits, regular check-ups, detailed reports on how the money is being spent. So, I think they have a ways to go in meeting that standard.”

The department says there aren’t enough resources to spot-check all the grants. Rasmussen says that’s a bad excuse.

“If you don’t have the money to properly oversee the taxpayer-funded grants you’re handing out, you shouldn’t be handing them out in the first place.”

To combat that problem, DCEO says it built a computer system to track grants automatically and cut off funds if it spots fraud. It also created a website showing how much money is going to each organization. Rasmussen says it’s a step in the right direction, but it’s still not enough.

“We’ve taken steps forward in saying, ‘okay, this grant recipient is getting $5,000.’ The next step is to say, ‘what did you do with the $5,000? Did you achieve hat you set out to do? And, if not, why not?'”

DCEO says the computerized grant monitoring program it just created is working. It’s even been recognized as a “Best Practice” by a national grant monitoring organization.