Poor oversight within two city agencies resulted in a now-defunct security company being paid $23 million more in taxpayer dollars without competing for the money, a new audit has shown. The District also overpaid the company, Hawk One Security, by nearly $2 million during the four years it held a citywide contract to guard D.C. government buildings and public schools. The company was paid nearly $106 million by the District from 2005 and 2009.
The audit, issued by the Office of the Inspector General, said a miscalculation in the original contract led the Office of Contracts and Procurement to modify Hawk One’s deal with the city to allow for more guard hours.
But the increase in hours raised the company’s total award over four years by $23 million — a 50 percent increase in the contract. Any increase in payment should have been competitively rebid, the audit said.
“OCP also did not determine the reasonableness of the Hawk One contract price,” thus “losing the opportunity to obtain a more economical per guard hour price,” said Inspector General Charles Willoughby. “We attribute this condition mainly to OCP officials’ lack of management oversight and supervision.”
The procurement office has a new director, James Staton, who took over earlier this year. Staton did not return a request for comment on the audit, nor did the office submit a response to the inspector general. However the audit said the procurement office generally agreed with the findings.
The audit also found that the city’s Department of Real Estate Services did not verify Hawk One’s actual work against the invoices, which resulted in a $1.9 million overpayment over four years. DRES’s response to the audit said it has implemented its own spot checks against invoices and other work records it receives to verify accuracy.
The city didn’t renew Hawk One’s contract after 2009 after complaints that employees in government buildings were poorly supervised, inadequately trained and armed, and ineffective at checking people. Schools said at the time that Hawk One personnel struggled to contain violence and had a history of fraternizing with students.
The company folded after it lost the city contract, leaving many of its security guards without a final paycheck.
