The Fenty administration says it provided performance measures to the police department for a $100,000 grant to D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty ally Ron Moten’s Peaceoholics, but the measures were not included in the grant’s contract, according to documents received by the police union through a Freedom of Information Act request and obtained by The Washington Examiner.
Peaceoholics, a nonprofit group that works with at-risk youth, spent $97,500 of the $100,000 grant on salaries, the documents show. A large portion of the remaining cash was used to buy Wii and Xbox video game systems, games for each and DVDs.
Over the past several months, Moten has become one of the loudest voices for Fenty’s re-election campaign. Moten has said he stepped down as the head of Peaceoholics last fall so he could campaign for the mayor.
Attempts to reach Moten were not successful.
Peaceoholics, documents show, won the grant in May 2008 as the fiduciary agent for a program run out of Brookland Manor in Northeast called Reaching Out to Provide Enlightenment. The program was set up to keep kids in the troubled neighborhood off the streets during summer of 2008.
An e-mail included in the 120 pages of documents the police union received shows that a program manager from Fenty’s office provided performance measures to the police department for the Peaceoholics’ grant.
Fenty spokeswoman Mafara Hobson said in a statement to The Examiner that the administration relies on its staff “to advise government agencies about proposed budgets. This includes proposing performance measures and reporting requirements to promote accountability.”
But the contract the police department signed with Peaceoholics upon releasing the grant doesn’t include any of the performance measures. The department did not respond to a request for comment.
Peaceoholics was also required to submit monthly reports “regarding the status of the fund expended and reports on progress made toward each objective,” the contract said. Those objectives, however, are not listed in the contract.
While the documents the police union received through the FOIA request do show monthly reports describing the work ROPE performed, they do not include details that specify how the funds were spent as the contract required. Instead, there are lists of items of purchased, such as the video games, and illegible invoices from “contract” employees.
“There’s no receipts, no information on how most of this money was actually spent,” said police union chief Kris Baumann. “There’s no evidence that anyone, anywhere, did anything.”
