Just when you think the grant-giving, eyebrow-raising antics at the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute can't possibly get any more interesting, they do.
A story in this morning's Star tells us that the friend of disgraced ICJI executive director Heather Bolejack who received a questionable $417,000 no-bid grant from the agency is now defending his intentions. Funny thing is, the program he "designed" for the award looks exactly -- down to the name -- like someone else's.
Oh, and then there's the following morsel, which should give every working Hoosier in the state pause to think, "Say, I should get me one of those federal grant things, cuz they pay pretty well."
"Though Gov. Mitch Daniels' office said 'clear evidence' exists that McKenna didn't provide any work for the money, McKenna said he has receipts and schedules that show otherwise.
"He said he used the $80,000 in the first installment to hire a staff of two, develop a Web site, plan the program, buy advertising and make contacts with local leaders. He objected to assertions that he didn't work for the money and said the past two weeks have been difficult.
"'I have been interrogated, investigated and implicated, said McKenna, who was to earn $95,000 a year as the grant's project director.
"Part of the money was used to pay some of the $55,000 annual salary of the program manager, Denise Moore. She was the state child welfare caseworker convicted of obstruction of justice in the 2002 death of 4-year-old Anthony Bars.
"The Indiana Court of Appeals overturned her conviction this year, saying her actions might have been negligent but weren't criminal. The attorney general's office is appealing that decision to the Indiana Supreme Court."
So, let us get this straight. McKenna was going to spend $150,000 a year on two salaries (who knows what the other staff member he hired was making)? That's almost half the amount of the grant he received. And not one child apparently was helped between the award of the grant and now, which, if our calendars are right, is almost six months.
Here are a few more questions that this story raises:
- Did McKenna identify funding from any other source on his grant application, or was he going to rely solely on the $417,000 to run his shop? (ICJI and the feds frown on grantees who rely only on one revenue source, and JABG grants require a local match.)
- Where did McKenna expect to house three staff members? (We've been to his office, and it looks like there might only be room for two.)
- Did McKenna provide any accountability mechanisms in his grant application? Did he follow them? Are the feds looking into that?
- When was he planning on helping the first child?
- How in God's name did he secure a grant that huge for a program that had sketchy details and no deliverables?
- Where does Denise Moore factor into all this?
- Is the story dead, or will it keep going?
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