Talk about white-collar crime! Local governments get enough Homeland Security money, they apparently don’t worry too much about having to account for it:
Project Shield program misused?
January 9, 2012
“…When you waste Homeland Security money, you are less safe … This put our citizens at risk,” U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-5th District, said.
Quigley and U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday to launch a criminal probe into how contractors made decisions and how Cook County spent grant money for Project Shield.
“We may have more than just a problem of lackadaisical management. This program may have been looted by Cook County officials and the primary and secondary contractors involved,” Kirk said.
Kirk pointed to 168 changes made to contracts during the project’s first four years. The changes all increased the cost of the project — one change alone increased the cost by $413,555 — but there was no documentation of what specifically the extra cost went toward, according to the report.
“Money was paid to contractors and subcontractors for additional or different work and yet we have no idea what they did or how it was accounted for,” Kirk said…”
RichardWanke.Com 