A government watchdog for Alaska’s economic development unit oversaw less than one percent of the federal funds his commission received, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Of the $167 million the Denali Commission accepted in grant funds between 2011 and 2013, the inspector general’s office, which presently consists of a lone auditor on loan from another federal agency, monitored the spending of just $150,000.
GAO said the auditor failed to investigate — or even receive — claims of fraud, waste or abuse, and provided only “limited oversight” of the commission’s energy and infrastructure programs.
Since former Denali Commission Inspector General Mike Marsh resigned in December 2013, auditors from the Commerce Department functioned as temporary replacements.
Marsh did not depart the commission quietly.
Public attention turned to the small agency when Marsh wrote several members of Congress requesting the commission be shut down altogether, which would have eliminated his own position and those of all his colleagues.
“I have concluded that Denali is a congressional experiment that hasn’t worked out in practice,” Marsh wrote in a June 2013 letter to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa of California.
“My role is, of course, performed as a public watchdog — not as the agency’s cheerleader, apologist, or lobbyist,” Marsh said.
In a November 2012 report, Marsh recommended that Congress delay reauthorization of the commission until officials located up to $100 million of grant funds in “missing-in-action” bank accounts.
Congress created the Denali Commission in 1998 to improve life in rural Alaska.
The Washington Examiner reported in January that the commission had awarded $47 million worth of grants to 21 Alaskan towns but done nothing to insure the funds were spent properly.
Go here to read the GAO report.
