A beer-brewing kit and more than 50 iPod music players are among hundreds of thousands of dollars’ in wasteful purchases by Homeland Security Department employees following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, according to a report released Wednesday.
Poor oversight allowed department employees to make a wide range of questionable purchases during the response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita last fall, congressional investigators at the Government Accountability Office found.
DHS employees and other federal employees can use purchase cards, similar to credit cards, to bypass bureaucratic red tape on smaller purchases. Congress increased the $2,500 cap for such cards to $250,000 after the two hurricanes devastated New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast last fall.
But the Homeland Security Department had no guidelines in place and little oversight of the purchase cards, the GAO found.
In many cases that led to unnecessary and possibly fraudulent purchases.
Laptops, printers missing
Investigators could not find 110 laptops, 22 printers and 12 flat-bottomed boats bought by employees using the cards — a loss of at least $300,000.
Employees bought $68,000 worth of unused dog booties designed to protect the feet of search dogs, as well as an $8,000 plasma television still in its box six months after the purchase.
The U.S. Secret Service spent $7,000 on 54 Apple iPod music players. The Secret Service said the digital devices were used for training and data storage but could not provide evidence to support the claim.
Employees also set up training seminars and “team-building exercises” at private golf and tennis resorts, bypassing cheaper or more convenient facilities.
The Coast Guard said the $1,000 an employee spent on beer-brewing supplies enabled the agency to save money that would be otherwise spent on commercial brands at official functions, but the GAO estimated that, including labor, each home-brewed six-pack would cost $13.
‘Failure of leadership’
The GAO did not provide an estimate of the total amount of money wasted by questionable purchases.
“There was a failure of leadership here,” said Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, whose Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee commissioned the report.
Oversight problems with the purchase cards “should have been resolved long before Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita,” Collins said at a hearing.
David Norquist, DHS’s new chief financial officer, said the agency has approved tighter spending guidelines but not yet implemented them. Incidents of possible fraud and abuse cited in the report will be investigated, he said.
A separate GAO review last month found that roughly 16 percent, or $1 billion, of aid payments to hurricane victims were based on bogus claims or spent on questionable items like diamond rings and sex videos.
