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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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HUD Inspector General Exposes ACORN’s Failure to Comply with Federal Grant Requirements Recommends ACORN Spin-Off Be Placed on ‘Inactive’ Status
Thursday, 23 September 2010 12:19
WASHINGTON D.C. – In response to a September 16, 2009 request by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), Inspections and Evaluations Division of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has released a report “detailing the results of its investigation of grant funds awarded under HUD’s Housing Counseling Program to ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc. (AHC) of Chicago, now operating as Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA).”
“For continued approval as a HUD-approved housing counseling agency and for future awards consideration, AHC (now operating as AHCOA) must bring its operations into full compliance with applicable laws, regulators, and policies governing HUD’s Housing Counseling Program,” the OIG’s report recommends. “The inability to fully support salary expenses allocated to the HUD grant raises serious concerns about the integrity of those charges, particularly given the millions of Federal and non-Federal dollars made available to AHC in FY 2008 and 2009. Further, services procured from ACORN “associated” organizations failed to meet the required tests of ‘open and free competition’. We recommend that HUD’s Office of Single Family Housing, Program Support Division consider placing AHCOA in ‘inactive’ status while its initiatives corrective actions to address the exceptions and recommendations in this report.”
“Any organization that applies for and accepts taxpayer dollars has a responsibility to act consistently with federal law,” said Issa. “It doesn’t matter if its ten dollars or ten thousand dollars, there is no acceptable amount of abuse or mismanagement that the federal government should tolerate when it comes to the taxpayer’s dollars.”
The OIG’s findings included:
HUD has awarded ACORN more than $19 million in housing counseling grants since 1995.
ACORN received $3,252,399 in housing counseling grants between 2008 and 2009. More than $2.544 million (nearly 80%) of the HUD grants were used to pay ACORN’s salaries.
ACORN may have concealed fraud by destroying or failing to produce records.
“A determination could not be made as to what activities the employees performed or which grant to charge for those activities. Consequently, HUD had no assurance that it did not bear more than its fair share of the costs incurred for salary expenses of AHC’s counselors.” (p.10).
“Availability of records impeded [HUD’s] attempt to trace AHC’s summary schedules of counselors’ salary expenses to the housing counseling activities that occurred[.]” (p.11).
§ ACORN Housing received more than $27.269 million from other Federal and non-Federal sources.
o NeighborWorks, a congressionally chartered nonprofit, provided ACORN with $25,857,000 million.
o “AHC’s caseload allocation methodology for salary expenses to the HUD housing counseling grants proved problematic in an environment of multiple funding sources and was unsupported.” (p. 11).
o NeighborWorks grant funds were misappropriated as well. “The housing counseling service costs were either charged as salary expenses to the HUD housing counseling grants or as fees to the NeighborWorks’ NFMC [National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling] grants. For counselors who provided services under both grants, reimbursement of their salary costs for HUD billing purposes was based on a percentage derived from the ration of HUD to NFMC cases as opposed to using the actual number of hours attributable to the HUD counseling grant.” (p. 11).
§ “Also, missing was documentation of the actual activities to support the percentages of allocations to the HUD grant.” There was “the risk of inequitable charges when counselors’ time was split between HUD, NFMC, and/or other funding sources.” (p. 11).
§ ACORN’s use of grants did not comply with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-122.
o ACORN charged the government salary costs for employees after they were terminated (p.12).
o ACORN charged 2008 salary expenses to a 2009 grant in violation of Article III and Article IX of the HUD grant agreement (p.12-13).
§ ACORN violated 24 CFR Part 84 (federal procurement standards) when it obtained accounting and legal services, leased office space, and sought health care and retirement benefits from its affiliated nonprofits. These services were obtained by ACORN without ensuring open and free competition as required by law.
§ Because ACORN failed to comply with 24 CFR Part 84, § 84.43, which requires that “All procurement transactions shall be conducted in a manner to provide . . . open and free competition [without] conflicts of interest as well as noncompetitive practices”, ACORN’s self-dealing served to funnel taxpayer dollars to its affiliates (p.13).
o Citizens Consulting, Inc., (CCI) an ACORN affiliate, provided AHC’s accounting and legal services and charged $345,174 to HUD.
o “CCI’s services were essentially a sole source arrangement that lacked an ‘arms length’ basis for demonstrating cost reasonableness.’” (p. 14).
o AHC leased office space from ACORN-San Jose, ACORN-Sacramento, Elysian Fields Corporation, and New Mexico Organizing and Support Center – all ACORN affiliates – and “Branch office leasing costs were charged directly to the HUD housing counseling grants” (p. 14).
o AHC obtained health care benefits for its employees from the Council Health Plan and the Community Health Insurance Plan (CHIP), both were identified as ACORN-owned in Elizabeth Kingsley’s June 18, 2008 report on ACORN mismanagement. “The costs of both plans were billed to the HUD counseling grants” (p. 15).
o ACORN’s retirement funds were managed by ACORN affiliate Council Benefit Association (CBA). Costs of $460,630 in 2008 and $384,693 in 2009 were billed to HUD (p. 15).
§ Unfortunately, ACORN’s money laundering is impossible to track: “Further, cost or price analysis and documentation to support the basis and justification for the services was not readily available.” (p. 13).
Click here to read April 2010 Oversight Republican report entitled “ACORN Political Machine Tries to Reinvent Itself.”
Click here to read the July 2009 Oversight Republican report entitled “Is ACORN Intentionally Structured as a Criminal Enterprise?”
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Wed Nov 17, 2010 10:02 am |
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twotap
F L I N T O I D
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Oh cmon we actually have an ex acorn who jumps in and out of Flintalk and he says acorn dont do nothin wrong.  |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Thu Nov 18, 2010 8:44 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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| I knew ACORN was not going to fade away. Why would they when they made so much money illegally? |
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Thu Nov 18, 2010 10:03 am |
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Domet
F L I N T O I D
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quote:
twotap schreef:
Oh cmon we actually have an ex acorn who jumps in and out of Flintalk and he says acorn dont do nothin wrong.
Actually, twotap, I have said they didn't do anything wrong in specific instances, in specific places, none of them relating to HUD Grant Funding. If ACORN did something wrong here, then they deserve to be brought to justice for it. This situation, unlike your several previous ones (note an absence of
all
) ones, actually has evidence for it, in which case, why would I stand against it?
I don't hold ACORN up as a holy saint that can do no wrong. If they do wrong, and you can prove they did wrong, then vulgar language 'em.
Every person, liberal, republican - of any background - should be held up for accountability. I hold Obama accountable for his failures, just as I held Bush accountable for his. The distinct difference between us is that I try to do this on the basis of evidence, not fear mongering and general ignorance. |
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Lack of support for your assertions does not make you a sage, it just makes the rest of us doubt your reasoning skills. - Elias12, Flint Talk Poster |
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Thu Nov 18, 2010 12:13 pm |
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twotap
F L I N T O I D
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| Right we can tell by your avatar. |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Thu Nov 18, 2010 1:29 pm |
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Domet
F L I N T O I D
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You can tell what by my avatar, twotap? That I think Glen Beck is a lying douche bag? There is little difference between my avatar and the one you had of Obama for some time, the difference being only that I think Beck is a bigger retard than Obama ever has been. I would love for him to tell us again how Soros is lying to the public and rationalizing that Beck is speaking truth because in a world where Soros owns the media, he couldn't lie about it on television.
What a farce.
Awesome misdirect, by the way. You are still a master of failing to keep on topic because you talk so much out of your ass that you have no solid positioning to keep yourself stable. One of the last stands of the ignorant is to change the topic and keep attacking the target so that your points seem more salient, when really they are merely as empty as your pathetic rhetoric. To see through your eyes must truly be a comedic tragedy. |
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Lack of support for your assertions does not make you a sage, it just makes the rest of us doubt your reasoning skills. - Elias12, Flint Talk Poster |
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Sun Nov 21, 2010 2:02 pm |
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twotap
F L I N T O I D
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"Soros owns the media"
And you claim Beck spews nonsense.
Whats really funny is that somewhere along the line you have come up with the idea that someone actually gives a rats ass what you think. By the way you have proven once again that regardless what your lib professors have you believing you would not last 20 seconds in a one on one with Beck. |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Mon Nov 22, 2010 9:48 am |
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Domet
F L I N T O I D
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quote:
twotap schreef:
And you claim Beck spews nonsense.
XD Sorry man - I can only go off of what he says, and he has claimed over and over again that Soros "controls" the media.. rationalizing in at least one episode that, "If it wasn't true, I couldn't be here saying." Talk about a logical disconnect - I see can see where you get your poor reasoning skills from. I would pick a better personal hero were I you.
quote:
twotap schreef:
Whats really funny is that somewhere along the line you have come up with the idea that someone actually gives a rats ass what you think.
What's actually funny is how you can't help but respond to the things I post, making it pretty clear that at leat
you
care. You are such a pathetic blow hard man, you can't even take the time to prove your own point by refusing to respond to me. It's amazing what a ridiculous dolt you are, top to bottom. XD My lord it's amusing.
A one on one with Beck? What point are you even trying to make? XD You are such a confused person - wasn't this argument about ACORN, and how I agreed that if they broke the law they should be prosecuted? And here you are continuing down with Beck - proving yet again that when pushed to the point, twotap my dear sir, you cannot stick to the facts or the argument
because you have nothing of value to offer.
You are a living parody of stupidity, and I get no end of enjoyment out of you. At least you are serving some purpose XD. |
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Lack of support for your assertions does not make you a sage, it just makes the rest of us doubt your reasoning skills. - Elias12, Flint Talk Poster |
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Thu Dec 02, 2010 3:33 pm |
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