Nicole Raz
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON (WMAL) — DC Councilmembers will grill the Department of General Services Wednesday about several major gaps in disclosed funding. The department, in part, spent $2.5 billion to modernize all of DC public schools, but there are still 24 schools left untouched and money left unaccounted for.
The hearing comes after an audit found the school modernization program lacks “basic financial management.”
“This is the people’s money,” DC Councilmember David Grosso told WMAL. “We raised this money through taxes and you can’t just go spend it willy nilly on what you want.”
Grosso says he wants to know: where’s the oversight?
“A school would be done, there’d be a ribbon cutting at the school saying it was done, and then there’d be an additional several million dollars spent after the school was done on projects at that building. What on Earth are they talking about?” Grosso told WMAL. “That just seems to me like no accountability, no oversight and no management of these projects.”
In one instance $44,945 of funds allocated for the District’s school modernization program were instead spent on parks and community centers.
“The fact that some money went to a different agency entirely — this could just be the tip of the iceberg of something much bigger,” Grosso said.
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