From Cris Barrish’s story on WHYY:
A year ago, the Police Athletic League of Delaware appeared to be in great shape.
The gymnasiums with multiple basketball courts at its Hockessin and Garfield Park facilities finally had air conditioning. Other major renovations, including electrical and roofing work, had been completed.
The agency known as PAL, which is sponsored and supported by New Castle County police, paid for the upgrades with millions of dollars in state and federal grants that were awarded during Executive Director Valerie Longhurst’s tenure as majority leader and later speaker of the Delaware House of Representatives.
Serious financial and operations problems, however, had been brewing for months at the nonprofit that provides free educational, athletic and mentorship programs to help kids thrive and stay out of trouble.
Now state and federal law enforcement authorities are investigating how PAL obtained and spent state and federal grants, sources familiar with the criminal probe told WHYY News.
The fraud and public trust divisions within the Delaware Attorney General’s Office have been looking into PAL’s finances since last fall and have sought the assistance of federal law enforcement, sources said. The probe heated up in recent weeks when FBI agents descended on Legislative Hall and the state Department of Finance with subpoenas for documents relating to the federal and state grants to PAL, sources said.
Don’t want to breach (too much) fair use standards. But this stuff all looks dirty:
- State finance officials demanded in February that PAL repay $863,992 in “duplicated and unallowable costs” from installing air conditioning and upgrading electrical systems at the Hockessin facility. The “recoupment” demand cited a compliance audit of how PAL spent a $1.8 million federal American Rescue Plan Act grant.
- That review by accounting firm BDO found that “PAL reported the same expenses on two different awards” by providing “duplicate invoice submissions” for both the ARPA grant and separate state grants.
- Besides the federal ARPA grant, state records show that PAL also received $3.8 million in state Community Reinvestment Funds for air conditioning and other renovations while Longhurst, a Democrat from the Bear area near Newark, was House majority leader and then House speaker.
- The BDO report said the $863,992 “had been previously reimbursed” by the state grants. The report “identified six invoices” that were used twice: four, totaling $714,283, from Brandywine Contractors for electrical, roofing and security work; and two, totaling $149,709, from Summit Mechanical, which put in the air conditioning system.
PAL never conducted a required “single audit” of how the ARPA money was spent, the BDO report said.
Hmmm, wonder which of BHL’s numerous campaign treasurers Val used to come up with this creative accounting…one more detail–
But WHYY News has also learned that after Longhurst submitted her resignation and while PAL was in financial distress, she awarded herself a $30,000 severance payout for vacation time she had not used during her 7 1⁄2 years running the agency.
A scam artist to the very end,
