Would you go to a Christmas Party if the Federal Government paid you $840 to do so? Well, this is just one of the questionable payments made to the boyfriend of a senior Housing Authority figure found by a recently completed Federal Audit as reported by the Los Angeles Times. Just another example of your tax dollars at work.

An investigation into the Department of Housing and Urban Development Authority unearthed massive overbilling, improper spending and unsubstantiated costs–to name a few. The reason that we cite it here in Independent Sources is because we get tired of hearing over and over how these programs are underfunded. Using this program as an example, a large percentage of Housing Authority monies are wasted or stolen. Throwing more tax dollars at these programs is not the answer any more than more money is the answer to fixing the problems at King/Drew.

In this particular program, $13 million was set aside for work experience for the low income residents of government housing. While often well-meaning, as with most of these programs, it was fertile ground for misuse. Among them:

$4.6 million was awarded to tenant “corporations” even though they did not have the capability to carry out the services required. As with most of these programs, money didn’t go to the firms with the lowest bids or the best ability to do the job. That would make too much sense. Instead the money was doled out on the basis of cronyism, love trysts, kickbacks, graft, and so forth.

$2.1 million went to a consultant with “a long-term personal and business relationship with the #2 administrator of the Housing Authority.” How incredibly convenient for this Housing Authority official, (identified in the report as Luicille Loyce). Instead of having to go through the time-consuming process of seeking out the most-deserving contractor, Ms. Loyce was able to hook-up her good “friend” (Dwayne E. Williams). (For the record, this seems to be standard operating procedure for Ms. Loyce. In a completely separate incident, Loyce was fired while being investigated over $1 million in questionable spending.)

Williams billed the government at his hourly rate ($140) while “making bank deposits, shopping for a vehicle, shopping for turkeys, searching for a van windshield, going to a music store, attending a march,” and other questionable activities including the $840 bill he gave to attend a Christmas party. Other charges were double- and triple-billed or lacked so much documentation that it was impossible to ascertain their basis.

In yet another example, the Housing Authority paid one of dummy tenant corporations $425,000 for a moving contract. The tenant corporation turned around and hired another corporation at the fair market value of $195,000 and pocketed the difference.

To be fair to Williams and Loyce, we should note their responses to these many allegations. For Williams, he lays blame on the tenant groups and “clerical errors”. The problem with these excuses of course is that he was the person paying and (supposedly training) these groups. Its like the briber laying the blame on the bribee. The “clerical errors defense” has all of the meat of a tax cheater saying “I’m sorry, I just forgot to pay my taxes all of these years”.

With Loyce’s crimes being so blatant, she’s pretty much limited to the discrimination defense–that catch all phrase thrown out when one is caught red-handed. (Note: who can blame her for playing this card in an era where it seems to almost always work. It worked for OJ in the early 90s and more recently in Inglewood, California, judge and jury saw fit to give two white cops caught on camera pummeling a suspect $2.4 million because their punishment was harsher than a black policeman’s punishment. That pathetic judgment so violates common sense it deserves its own posting.)

So why doesn’t someone just pull the plug on this and the other simililarly leaky Clinton-era programs and re-deploy the money in more transparent and effective methods? Well, that would just make too much common sense. Meanwhile, with programs like this, we can count on more and more bylines with similar stories of graft and greed–all at the expense of taxpayers. For the record, I’m available if HUD is still willing to pay people $840 to attend Christmas parties.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 27th, 2005 at 11:17 pm by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable, Your Tax Dollars In Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.