136th Year... and
still on
the job!
Tuesday November 08,
2005
|
|
||
|
|
136th Year... and
still on
the job!
|
Tuesday November 08,
2005
|
DENVER - A state audit on Monday criticized the Department of Local Affairs for paying for a new state emergency management center with money intended for local governments, including those around the Pueblo Chemical Depot.
A performance audit of the state's Homeland Security Grant Program said the department improperly used an estimated $5.9 million in grant money to help the state obtain space and to equip its new Multi-Agency Communications Center at the South Metro Fire Rescue District's administrative offices in the Denver Tech Center.
Among those grants, was $933,000 from federal Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program Grants, which provides funding to communities around the nation's eight remaining chemical weapons plants, including the Pueblo Chemical Depot.
But instead of that money going to communities around the nearby facility, it was used to purchase new audio visual, telecommunication and automated data processing equipment at the new emergency management center on Denver's south side.
"Through a less than transparent series of transactions, DOLA granted South Metro the funds to help design and equip South Metro's 911 Dispatch Center in exchange for the state's lease of office space for the state's MACC," the audit said. "On paper, DOLA granted about $5.9 million to South Metro; however, substantively, DOLA awarded these funds to itself, funneling the grant funds through South Metro to pay for a state building project."
In addition to the chemical weapons money, other money DOLA used on the project came from $3.2 million in federal Homeland Security Grants and $1.7 million from the state's own Energy and Mineral Impact Assistance Grants, a grant program that the department oversees that awards tax revenues from mining and oil and gas drilling to local communities.
DOLA Executive Director Mike Beasley said his department did nothing improper, and that the auditor's comments were based on an incorrect interpretation of state statutes and federal grant rules.
Beasley said his department has used federal chemical stockpile grant money in the past to help pay for the state's old emergency operations center in Golden before it was moved to the Denver Tech Center in Englewood.
"I did what I felt was best and I really do believe we followed the law," Beasley said. "If you're asking me if I have a chemical weapons computer, I don't. If you're asking me if I have a special audio visual system for chemical weapons, I don't. It's all integrated, it's all intertwined and it's all one."
The audit questioned why the state gave up an underground facility it already owned, which was known as "The Bunker," in exchange for a lease-purchase agreement for the second floor of a nearly all glass building.
"We found that DOLA signed the agreement to acquire space for the MACC before it complete a security analysis of the above ground, nearly all-glass structure," the audit said. "The (structure) was not built to withstand a chemical, biological, nuclear or explosive event."
State Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West and chairwoman of the Legislature's Capital Development Committee, said the project was not presented to her committee, nor did it approve it.
She called on Beasley and his staff to report to the CDC about the project. She also said that as the state representative whose district includes the Pueblo Chemical Depot she wants a better accounting of how chemical stockpile money has been used in the past.
McFadyen said that while she can understand the need for the state to have an effective emergency operations center, she questioned how putting chemical stockpile money in a facility in the Denver metropolitan area protects those who live near the Pueblo plant.
"If we can purchase equipment that can be used for other things, we'll get more use out of it," McFadyen said. "But the most important purpose of this $933,000 is to make sure those living in and around that stockpile are safe. I will request of Mr. Beasley and the Department of Local Affairs to sit down with us to help us better understand what that relationship is. If the MACC is the umbrella organization, that's one thing, but we need to make sure that the constituents in Pueblo County and those around the county are all safe."
The audit did reveal that numerous federal homeland security grants have gone to several communities in the state, including Southern Colorado. Nearly $138 million has been awarded to various communities and the state for such things as equipment, planning and training.
Since 2002, counties in the San Luis Valley have received approximately $6 million in grants, while Southeastern Colorado counties have received more than $10 million. Pueblo County alone has received nearly $5 million in homeland security grants in the past three years.
The South Metro building agreement wasn't the only thing that drew auditors’ criticism of DOLA.
The audit also questioned the way some grants were being awarded and on what they were being used. It said the process for how grants are awarded is flawed, citing, among other things, an advisory committee whose members were lobbying for grants for their own communities rather than what was best to protect the state as a whole.