While the D.C. government was getting a “clean” audit from a private outside firm, the General Accountability Office was finding “deficiencies across the District’s procurement system that frequently produce negative impacts on the [city’s] integrity and operations.” Even D.C. government’s chief financial officer Natwar Gandhi, Washington’s self-proclaimed “bean counter,” admitted that “procurement people do not even comply with the procurement regulations” — a sign of something gone seriously awry.
But a BDO Seidman LLP audit nonetheless gave the city a flawless stamp of approval, somehow missing 11,000 vouchers worth more than $217 million that GAO investigators said violated basic procurement rules. Two of Gandhi’s top lieutenants refused to sign the whitewash, Examiner reporter Bill Myers recently reported, which they said was done more to protect Gandhi’s reputation than to catalogue systemic problems.
Hmm. Auditing firm gives client thumbs up, while ignoring troubling deviations from good management practices. Where have we heard that before?
In 1997, the D.C. Council gave the mayor the power to appoint an experienced, independent chief procurement officer who would save money by acting as the city’s exclusive contracting authority. Even then, 12 agencies (including the council itself and the D.C. Boardof Education) were excluded from having to order goods and services through the CPO’s office, which has been vacant since 2004. All five former CPOs appointed to the job resigned before their five-year terms were up, the GAO reports, citing “lack of influence and control over the acquisition function” as the major reason for their too-hasty departures.
By limiting the CPO’s authority and in some cases even circumventing it altogether, council members undermined the city’s ability to prevent questionable or unauthorized spending. Such waste and abuse could run as high as $425 million, according to Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who originally requested the GAO review. Since $603 million of the city’s revenue comes from the federal government, this is not simply a District concern. Last year, the Department of Education listed DCPS as being at “high risk” for misusing federal education funds; it’s no coincidence it also racked up nearly half of the city’s improperly awarded contracts.
But DCPS wasn’t the only agency skirting the rules. As the city’s financial watchdogs, Gandhi’s 1,448 employees should have intervened whenever city employees demonstrated blatant disregard for procurement rules by resorting to sole-source contracts, preferential treatment for favored vendors, or inappropriate use of vouchers.
City employees accustomed to taking liberties with public funds will continue to do so until they’re stopped.
If Mayor Adrian Fenty and council members don’t follow the money trail and clean a very dirty house, what’s to stop Congress from stepping in, again, and doing it for them.
