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Mar
11
[Viewer advisory: This post contains some sarcasm. Read and react at your own peril.]
Last week I sent this waste tip to Eye on the Statehouse, but it hasn’t appeared yet nor have I received any comment beyond a form email:
I’m using this form to provide a waste spending tip.
The Ohio House and Senate decided to sue Governor Strickland over his veto of a bill. They authorized a quarter of a million dollars for themelves to pursue this lawsuit with outside counsel.
Since Eye on the Statehouse posted an implication that Attorney General Marc Dann should be careful with how much he uses and spends on outside counsel, this item about the Statehouse’s authorization for itself of a quarter of a million dollars to pursue a lawsuit with outside counsel seems to fall right into the same niche of waste you have targeted.
Please post this item as an example of waste in the Statehouse. Thank you.
Then, this morning, I read this Columbus Dispatch item about alleged waste in the former Governor Taft-run faith-based office and I sent this email to Eye on the Statehouse:
Please use this item as an example of waste:
http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2007/03/11/20070311-C6-00.html
It concerns the following, as stated in the Dispatch’s article:
“A contractor getting paid $3,500 a day to oversee faithbased initiatives for needy Ohio families spent some of the federal welfare money on downtown parking, big-screen televisions and a glowing report on the job it was doing, it was reported yesterday.
“Gov. Ted Strickland last week asked the state inspector general and the Department of Job and Family Services to investigate the Governor’s Office on Faithbased and Community Initiatives and its $2 million contract with We Care America, the Dayton Daily News reported.”
Specifically:
“The state set aside $22 million over two years from a surplus in federal welfare funds for a project to strengthen families in July 2005. That September, We Care America, based in Lansdowne, Va., won the contract to manage the project.
“The newspaper reviewed invoices, e-mails and other documents related to the contract, and found expenses including $15,000 to buy and install 50-inch televisions in the Columbus and Virginia offices, $125 monthly downtown parking fees and $6,000 to commission a report that said Ohio’s faith-based programs should be an example for other states.
“Krista Sisterhen, the former director of the faith-based office, said yesterday that the agency worked closely with state financial overseers.”
And finally:
“We Care was one of seven bidders for the contract. Four met the requirement to have experience in three areas: helping former inmates re-enter society, marriage counseling and providing mentors to troubled youth.
“The Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies met those requirements and submitted a bid at a lower price than We Care, but was rejected because it lacked experience developing Web sites, the newspaper said.
“We Care later was allowed to subcontract the Internet work, said Phil Cole, the Ohio Association’s executive director. “
Thank goodness Buckeye Institute is a nonpartisan entity, because this example of waste that’s being inherited but thank goodness investigated by the current administration is something that I know I, as an Ohio voter and taxpayer, want you to expose to your broader audience.
Does We Care America do some good work that needs to be done? Most likely, yes. But that doesn’t justify receiving millions of dollars for religious work: in fact, it has filed an amicus brief in support of the Bush administration’s attempt to prohibit taxpayers from challenging federal expenditures on behalf of religion (see Hein v. Freedom of Religion Foundation; the core issue being that we not destroy any further the wall between church and state, to the extent that Congress or an executive order could allow taxpayer money to be spent on building churches and or other unconstitutional uses of taxpayer money; read more here).
If you read or otherwise learn about waste, whereever you find it, I hope you’ll forward it to Eye of the Statehouse too and press them to fulfill their mission statement, or else give up their tax exempt status. From what I’ve seen, for an entity that calls itself nonpartisan, it doesn’t read or behave that way.
For example, it hasn’t mentioned Treasurer Richard Cordray’s termination of a contract with KeyCorp that will save hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it’s given no kudos to Attorney General Marc Dann’s win with a hattip to Republican and former Attorney General, Jim Petro. that was reported nationally on Marketplace.
So there are two waste tips and two “pistol of the week” entries. I’m doing all the work for you, Mr. LoParo. Aw – just kidding.
Maybe I just need to give you a little more time to demonstrate your new, nonpartisan nature?
Or not.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:46 pm March 11th, 2007 in Politics
Comments
4 Responses to “Eye on Eye of the Statehouse needed”
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If they spent like this and everything is true, somebody needs to be held accountable, regardless of religion or party affiliation.
KING
This makes me want to put a pillow over my head and scream. Let us know if you need a mass emailing – meaning, you don’t get a response; there is no excuse for this!
Yes yes!! “or not….”
God those people really tick me off. “Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean”…
Thanks for the comments. Eye has indeed posted on this situation I think – it will be interesting to see what gets done though to turn things around with such waste. Don’t know if any of you have read but apparently We Care America in Ohio is totally AWOL right now.
Not good.