office” being picked on by an aggressive U.S. attorney.
But
the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and
Prevention, which finds itself tangled in a federal investigation over at least
one grant awarded last year, is larger and more influential than it might
appear, with a rising budget and swelling staff.
The federal grant money it
collects and distributes has nearly quadrupled in 10 years, from $10.5 million
in 1992 to $39 million this year. The staff of 45 authorized by the state
budget is supplemented by an additional 32 employees, who receive their
paychecks through the University System of Maryland.
“We’ve really been
entrepreneurial,” said Stephen P. Amos, a former U.S. Department of Justice
official who has been executive director for two years. “We are an agency that
has more discretionary money than probably any agency in the state.”
Townsend has overseen the office since its creation in 1995,
when two other agencies were merged. It has become a visible platform for her
crime-fighting philosophies.
Funds have flowed from the
office to every corner of Maryland, from $534 for a sound
system for Mountain Lake Park in Garrett County to $48,500 for police overtime
in Somerset County, with Townsend frequently appearing at news conferences to
announce new projects.
The lieutenant governor is now counting on the
support of allies she has made during the past seven-plus years in her bid for
governor. Her crime programs – from the HotSpot community
safety initiative to the Police Corps law enforcement training strategy – are a
cornerstone of her campaign.
The crime
office made headlines last week with news that U.S. Attorney
Thomas M. DiBiagio is investigating a $503,000 grant to a partnership of not-
for-profit agencies with ties to Prince George’s County politicians.
The
state office’s records of a grant to the Diamonds of
Opportunity program were subpoenaed, as were documents from Safe Streets Inc.,
a Prince George’s County agency co-founded by Del. Joanne C. Benson. Safe
Streets’ executive director is Terry Lawlah, daughter-in-law of state Sen.
Gloria G. Lawlah.
Townsend has said she is not involved in individual grants
and was not pressured by Prince George’s officials to provide money there. She
has called the investigation “political garbage,” seeing a connection between
it and her likely Republican gubernatorial opponent Rep. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.,
a strong supporter of DiBiagio’s.
The lieutenant governor called it “an
amazing coincidence” that DiBiagio would “take on a tiny little
office” when there are “many other challenges to be involved
in.”
Federal authorities have previously recognized the potential for
problems in Office of Justice Programs grants, which make up
the bulk of the crime office’s budget. The
Justice Department’s Inspector General, in a December 2000 report to Congress,
said the multibillion-dollar grant programs are a high risk for fraud given the
amount of money involved and tens of thousands of grantees.
But Amos said
Maryland grant awards follow a defined process, which typically includes public
notice and reviews by advisory boards. He said he has “very, very high”
confidence that grant money is well-spent.
“It is not a political slush
fund,” Amos said. “What the lieutenant governor is doing is bringing a vision.
It is my job to implement it.”
State legislative auditors and some lawmakers
also have raised questions about the state office, which
oversees 1,600 grants, up from 1,200 as recently as February.
“We all would
really like to be more careful about the groups we give money to, but we can
only go by what they tell us,” said Sen. Barbara A. Hoffman, a Baltimore
Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee.
Del.
John R. Leopold, an Anne Arundel County Republican whose subcommittee oversees
the office’s budget, said he has concerns about whether the
agency’s increased funding is being used to create more positions that report
to the lieutenant governor rather than to improve programs.
But Leopold said
he has found the agency helpful in designating a HotSpot in his district’s
Brooklyn Heights neighborhood. “My dealings with that office
have all been positive,” he said.
The office has been the
subject of critical comments by the General Assembly’s nonpartisan
Office of Legislative Audits – most recently in November. While
the audit found no corruption, it detailed several inefficiencies. According to
the audit:
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The GOCCP failed to request federal grant funds in a timely
manner, costing the state at least $150,000 in interest income.
An automated
victim-notification service administered by the office,
scheduled to be up and running in November 2000, was operating at less than
one-fifth of the scheduled sites seven months later. The auditors criticized
the GOCCP for failing to penalize the contractor.
The office
did not verify that grant recipients were spending money as intended.
Such
complaints are not unusual in state audits, which focus on agencies’
administrative mistakes rather than achievements.
However, Bruce A. Myers,
the chief legislative auditor, said the office has been having
accounting problems for years and that many of its shortcomings were identified
in previous audits.
“For an agency that size, they should have been doing a
better job,” Myers said, adding that other agencies – including others that
report to Townsend – do a much better job of managing federal funds.
Michael
Sarbanes, Townsend’s deputy chief of staff for policy and a former GOCCP
director, acknowledged the mistakes but said there is an explanation. “There’s
been an enormous growth in the size and complexity of the agency and the number
of grants it manages,” he said. “The audit findings largely pointed out the
need for an automated system, which in fact was being implemented while the
audit was being completed.”
Adam Gelb, a former Townsend policy adviser,
said similar offices in other states have followed a standard
model for decades: passing out money “to whoever asks for it.”
“The Maryland
office in my view made unparalleled efforts to change the way business was done
– to put the money where the crime is and to hold people’s feet to the fire,”
he said. “It’s almost inconceivable that such a massive increase in funding
wouldn’t occur without some mistakes.”
Amos concedes that potential
applicants weren’t informed that $9 million was available this year in federal
funds from the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance
Program. But he said he didn’t need to give notice because the state’s
allowance was decreased, so no new money was available and only existing
programs would be funded.
The office does more than distribute money, Amos
said. It develops crime-fighting strategies in places such as Ocean City, where
underage drinking is a problem, and in Prince George’s, where Metro-station
crime is on the rise. It provides technical assistance and training, and
monitors programs.
“There’s a lot of thinking and policy-making that goes on
here,” said Robert W. Weinhold Jr., the office’s director of public affairs,
policy and research.
Agency staff who are paid through the University System
of Maryland receive money through federal funds, Amos said, not state taxpayer
dollars. University settings can help attract and retain high-quality
researchers, he said.
But the web of grants and payroll systems can be
confusing even to employees.
“People are paid out of different funding
streams,” said Joseph Sviatko, a former employee who worked in communications.
“I was paid out of the Police Correction Training Commission.” Sviatko said he
sometimes wondered about the arrangement, “but I never asked.”
Leopold, the
Anne Arundel delegate, said he has not seen any evidence that politics has
inappropriately influenced grant awards, but he noted that elected officials
often get involved as advocates for their communities. In the case of Brooklyn
Heights, he said, the district’s senator and other two delegates – all
Democrats – joined with him to go to bat for the HotSpot designation.
Where
legitimate political advocacy crosses the line into something inappropriate, he
said, is “when the influence by elected officials is self-serving.”
Sun staff writer Sarah Koenig contributed to this article.