The District’s top investigator said Thursday that a lack of oversight is to blame for the recent rash of fraud cases involving city workers and his office lacks the enforcement power to stop the abuse — even when it’s spotted early on.
“Wherever we’ve found problems, the one common thing is a lack of adequate oversight, people taking seriously their work and a lack of policies and procedures,” Inspector General Charles Willoughby told the D.C. Council Committee on Government Operations. “The problem isn’t housed within one agency, it’s across the board.”
Willoughby noted that his office doesn’t have the authority to enforce any of the recommendations his inspectors and auditors make when they do find problems with how agencies conduct their business.
That means that the city’s ability to stop abuse before it starts — and costs the District money — mostly relies on agencies policing themselves.
That doesn’t always get the best results, Willoughby said. In the most recent example of fraud, 130 current and former city employees were accused this month of stealing a collective $800,000 from the city in unemployment benefits while still on the job.
But nearly four years before that scandal broke, a 2008 audit concluded the city’s unemployment system was open to fraud.
Another audit in February 2010 concluded the nonprofit D.C. Children & Youth Investment Trust Corp. was subject to political influence in the awarding of its grants. Nearly two years after that audit, then-Councilman Harry Thomas Jr. resigned and pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $300,000 from D.C. by using the investment trust to steer city grant money to nonprofits that then kicked back money to him.
Willoughby said his office conducts follow-ups on the recommendations in its reports, which are also sent to the Office of Risk Management, D.C. Council and the mayor.
Ward 4 Councilwoman Muriel Bowser, who chairs the Government Operations Committee, told Willoughby on Thursday’s that’s not good enough.
“We have to kind of stop this kind of government [blame game] of ‘I told him to do it and he didn’t do it,’ ” she said.
She also said she would work with Willoughby on the outstanding recommendations for agencies under her committee’s purview.
A spokeswoman for Mayor Vincent Gray noted the unemployment fraud cases “have been or may be forwarded to the Office of the Attorney General for appropriate action” and that the administration is “implementing policies and systems to improve oversight and follow-through.”
