VA Pre-Paid $68 Million To Energy Contractors
January 8, 2024
The Veterans Health Administration gave energy vendors $68 million in prepayments that didn’t comply with federal law, a new audit found.
The prepayments totaled $10 million in FY 2020 and approximately $58 million in FY 2022, using surplus medical facility funds, according to a December audit from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs Office of Inspector General.
These one-time payments are acceptable if they shorten the term of an energy savings performance contract in compliance with Federal Energy Management Program guidance, including that energy cost savings must exceed payments in each contract year, the audit stated.
But the VA’s program made a number of one-time prepayments that exceeded the annual amounts, contrary to federal law and Federal Energy Management Program guidance.
“VA is taking on significant risk by not ensuring that a contractor’s energy baseline and savings estimates are validated before awarding the contract and by not adhering to federal payment restrictions,” the audit found. “VHA energy managers need to witness contractor energy baseline measurements, check assumptions, and review calculations to ensure the estimates are reasonable. Once contracts have been awarded and energy upgrades installed, there is no way to retroactively determine baseline measurements for these projects.”
Making these baseline measurements are critical to validating energy savings, and without performing its due diligence up front, VA has no way of measuring how well a contractor is performing and ensuring it’s achieving cost savings for the taxpayer.
These one-time payments are acceptable if they shorten the term of an energy savings performance contract in compliance with Federal Energy Management Program guidance, including that energy cost savings must exceed payments in each contract year, the audit stated.
But the VA’s program made a number of one-time prepayments that exceeded the annual amounts, contrary to federal law and Federal Energy Management Program guidance.
“VA is taking on significant risk by not ensuring that a contractor’s energy baseline and savings estimates are validated before awarding the contract and by not adhering to federal payment restrictions,” the audit found. “VHA energy managers need to witness contractor energy baseline measurements, check assumptions, and review calculations to ensure the estimates are reasonable. Once contracts have been awarded and energy upgrades installed, there is no way to retroactively determine baseline measurements for these projects.”
Making these baseline measurements are critical to validating energy savings, and without performing its due diligence up front, VA has no way of measuring how well a contractor is performing and ensuring it’s achieving cost savings for the taxpayer.
Medical School Hires Dean’s Daughter As Poetry Professor
January 9, 2024
The Southern Illinois University School of Medicine briefly employed its first poetry professor this fall, university records show.
Why would a medical school need to offer poetry? It probably wouldn’t unless the poetry teacher is the dean’s daughter, The College Fix reported.
Emily Kruse Carr, the daughter of medical school den Jerry Kruse, was hired for the job. But, university spokeswoman Rikeesha Phelon said, he was not involved in hiring his daughter.
Carr, a creative writing professor and self-described “ecofeminist” and “beach witch,” was hired by the medical school as an assistant professor of medical humanities and medical education in August, according to her LinkedIn profile and university records, the news outlet reported. Her position appears to have been ended soon after once it was reported.
The university didn’t answer The College Fix’s questions about why Carr is no longer employed and if her position was temporary. But a page on Carr’s personal website lists four upcoming events at the medical school in 2024, suggesting she planned to stay longer the outlet reported.
Kruse also didn’t respond to The College Fix’s questions on whether he is involved in hiring practices and what steps were taken to ensure there was no conflict of interest in his daughter’s hiring.
Kruse and Carr are not accused of breaking any laws, as Illinois statutes give employees a lot of latitude.
Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of Open The Books, questioned “how and if creative writing serves a medical school’s core mission” and said the situation should make taxpayers wonder.
“There are 5,800 institutions of higher learning across America. What are the odds that Carr landed at the only institution that employs her father as dean and provost?” Andrzejewski told The College Fix. “Was Carr’s father part of the decision to create this new role and was there an open process to consider each candidate equally?”
While the university did not respond to The College Fix’s questions about Carr’s salary and duties, the national median pay for postsecondary teachers is just under $77,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Before being hired at the medical school, Carr taught creative writing at New College in Florida, according to Ms. Magazine. But she resigned in July after being named in an opinion article criticizing the dearth of ideological diversity at the school.
In the magazine, Carr described herself as “a beach witch, love poet, ecofeminist professor” who is “famous” for her poetry about abortion, anorexia, tarot, and divorce." She said she enjoys playing “tarot at the beach with my puppy,” and characterized her poetry as “dangerous.”
Her LinkedIn profile shows that she was hired at her father’s medical school a month later. Her profile states the position included serving as project manager for the medical school’s Story Slam project and overseeing 11 staff, student employees, and contractors. Story Slams are events that welcome individuals to share personal stories, often with audiences voting for which ones they like best.
Biden Admin Gives $100,000 For Palestinian Girls’ Running and Wellness
January 10, 2024
As Israel fights a war against the terrorist group Hamas, the Biden administration has funded $100,000 for 200 adolescent Palestinian girls and young women to participate in weekly running and wellness sessions.
Federal funding records show that the U.S. Department of State awarded the funding in September for a roughly two-year initiative to Free to Run, a Connecticut-based nonprofit seeking “to increase the opportunities for women and girls to engage in public life, using sport as a tool of empowerment and education,”the Washington Examiner reported.
According to federal records, the program is being administered in the West Bank.
Lawmakers have protested the U.S. giving federal funding to Gaza and the West Bank after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terrorist attacks against Israel that killed more than 1,200 people and took more hostage, especially worrying that aid could end up in the hands of terrorists.
Free to Run founder and president Stephanie Case is chief of the refugee protection division for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, an agency that deals with Palestinian aid. For years, lawmakers and national security experts have scrutinized the group for sharing ties with Hamas and employing teachers who have celebrated terrorism against Jews, including after the Oct. 7 attack, The Washington Examiner reported.
The $100,000 from the State Department sent to Free to Run is not its first federal handout.
Last September, the State Department pledged $50,400 to the organization “to make powerful advances in the leadership skills through adventure sports (primarily running)” for 100 displaced young women in Iraq, according to federal spending records. And in April 2019, Trump's State Department awarded the charity $77,300 “to empower & educate 100 females between the ages of 15-25 in 2 regions and across 4 communities,” records show.
Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of Open The Books, said the latest Free to Run grant shows that Congress must go line-by-line and stop the government's “frivolous and stupid spending.”
“I'm signed up for my 10th Chicago Marathon and certainly understand the benefits of running,” Andrzejewski, an avid outdoorsman, told the Washington Examiner. “However, there's no public purpose for this six-figure grant being underwritten by the American taxpayer with every dime borrowed against our national debt.”
Throwback Thursday: FAA Bails Out Airline Loans
January 11, 2024
Throwback Thursday!
In 1983, the Federal Aviation Administration landed a $47 million default on the taxpayer — $132 million in 2023 dollars — to bail out bankrupt airlines.
For this wasteful spending, Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, gave the FAA a Golden Fleece Award in 1986. He gave awards to wasteful and nonsensical spending, eventually handing out 168 Golden Fleece Awards between 1975 and 1988.
Airlines used the FAA’s federal-guaranteed loan program to buy airplanes and parts. The program ended in 1983, when it began paying out $47 million to cover defaults.
“This sounds like ‘plane’ nonsense to me,” Proxmire quipped then. “The taxpayers should be making a flap over this loss.”
The money came straight form the U.S. Treasury, not paid by some sort of airline user fee or tax.
When airline deregulation began in 1978, removing federal control of fares, routes, and more, this FAA loan program ran into turbulence.
“Market demand, instead of bureaucratic decisions started determining which airlines would prosper,” Proxmire noted. “What had been a comfortably settled industry was thrown into turmoil. The taxpayers are paying for part of that turmoil.”
He listed nine airlines that most Americans today have never heard of all, all which had defaulted on their loans and were bailed out by the U.S. government.
“These loans have put the government in a ‘heads, they win, tails, we lose’ situation,” the senator said. “Some air carriers are going to make a bundle from deregulation. Their owners will win. What about the losers?”
IRS Program Overpaid Tax Credits By $6.2 Million
January 12, 2024
The Internal Revenue Service’s program that administers Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers paid almost $10.9 million in erroneous retroactive tax credits to individuals whose TIN was not issued on or before the return due date, a new audit found.
There were 5,534 tax returns for which the IRS paid the almost $10.9 million in erroneous tax credits, according to a December audit from the Treasury Inspector General For Tax Administration, a finding that comes after years of warning about the use of Certifying Acceptance Agents.
The IG explained that Certifying Acceptance Agents or CAAs, help TIN applicants authenticate their identifying documents before submitting their application to the IRS.
Since 2018, the IG “has repeatedly raised concerns related to the use of CAA, including that the IRS has not effectively ensured that compliance reviews were completed on those CAAs that presented the highest risk to the ITIN Program,” the audit found.
In 2020, it reported that for FY 2016-FY 2019, the IRS completed an average of over 300 reviews per fiscal year. In FY 2022, the IRS completed only 25 compliance reviews of domestic-based CAAs and didn’t do any compliance reviews during FY 2023.
What’s more, the IG audit found 2,519 tax returns with refundable and nonrefundable credit claims for $4.7 million that were incorrectly disallowed when the TINs were issued on time. With the $10.9 million erroneous tax credits paid, the $4.7 million in incorrectly denied claims brings the IRS overpayment to $6.2 million.
The IG recommended that the IRS review the 5,534 tax returns for which the IRS incorrectly paid retroactive credit claims and the 2,519 tax returns for which the IRS incorrectly denied retroactive credit claims “and ensure that erroneous funds are recovered and that taxpayers receive the benefits to which they are entitled.”
The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.