EXCLUSIVE: State Department oversight of climate change spending abroad is a mess, watchdog reports
This is how government works. Just the latest scandal. And it's out tax dollars!
Read more: EXCLUSIVE: State Department oversight of climate change spending abroad is a mess, watchdog reports | Fox NewsInadequate oversight, lax bookkeeping, sloppy paperwork, haphazard performance agreements and missing financial documentation have plagued U.S. State Department spending of tens of millions of dollars to combat climate change, according to a report by State’s internal financial watchdog — and the problem could be much, much bigger than that.
1. OIG looked at seven of 19 program grants totaling $34 million, and discovered they contained no specific plans for monitoring the results
2. So-called grant oversight officers whose responsibilities included developing the monitoring plans, also failed to provide written reviews of compliance with State Department reporting standards, along with a variety of other financial procedures
3. Oversight officers apparently didn’t do a lot of overseeing. The OIG discovered that actual visits to climate change sites were rare, and when they occurred, not much effort went into examining the actual paperwork involved
4. Requirements that grant recipients submit quarterly financial statements were apparently ignored, even though procedures called for cutoffs if the statements were not provided
5. The same cavalier attitude toward reporting apparently applied even when projects ended. As the report discreetly puts it, overseers “did not always obtain the final reports needed to ensure that final deliverables were achieved, funds were reconciled, and proper closeout of the project was completed.”
6. One reason for this, apparently, is that reporting requirements for detailed results toward specific indicators — along with general goals and objectives — were not included in any of the seven grants examined by OIG.
This is how government works. Just the latest scandal. And it's out tax dollars!