In last week’s Full Committee hearing, AmeriCorps’ Inspector General, Deborah J. Jeffrey, confirmed what we already knew - AmeriCorps is a failed experiment.
Inspector General Jeffrey made clear that AmeriCorps’ latest failed audit is part of a pattern of inefficient use of taxpayer funds and overall mismanagement. Even more concerning, she stated that to her knowledge, AmeriCorps does not have a plan in place to fix these problems.
When talking about the inability of her office to do a complete audit of AmeriCorps, the IG stated that her office would often get “financial information that was internally inconsistent or, in some cases, obviously wrong" She also stated that AmeriCorps has a “lack of organization and defects in [their] systems…" She explained that if this was a private organization “[Y]ou would see wholesale resignation or firing of the leadership team, and [the public] would be shorting their stock."
Shockingly, this isn’t the worst of AmeriCorps’ problems. She said her office has been concerned about AmeriCorps’ “need to upgrade the criminal history checks…. we have actually found instances in which convicted sex offenders had access to members of vulnerable populations because the checks were not performed properly."
She said later in the hearing, “It has been profoundly disturbing to us that the agency has not treated this with the urgency that we believe it requires, and that we are basically reporting the same findings year after year after year."
Fraud is a widespread problem. According to Jeffrey, “[T]here were other jurisdictions in which, sadly, AmeriCorps members were being encouraged to commit fraud in a program that’s supposed to foster civic engagement. And that is truly awful." She also noted that “nobody [in AmeriCorps] is immune from fraud, it happens at all levels."
When asked about cases of bribery and embezzlement of AmeriCorps funds, Jeffrey replied, “That is one of the most disturbing cases that I’ve ever seen, because it involved, essentially, a conspiracy between the executive director of the Hawaii Commission, which is one of the major… grantees, and a program administrator at a sub-recipient. And these two people were endlessly inventive about ways to siphon money away from the people of Hawaii."
When asked why AmeriCorps didn’t respond to more than 60 recommendations from her office she said, “[T]his should have been an all-hands-on-deck emergency. It should have been that way after the first year, but the agency just hasn’t put resources and hasn’t put attention into this."
Ms. Jeffrey summed up her concerns, “…I do understand the sense of great impatience on the part of the Congress and the American people, to say, ‘Why should we keep supporting an organization that cannot produce transparent and accountable financial information for the public?’"
As Education and Labor Committee Republican Leader Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said in her opening statement, “This is a failed agency that needs to be overhauled completely or just eliminated."
