EXCLUSIVE: Millbury Police Violates Stimulus Act

Monday, May 14, 2012

Walter Bird Jr., GoLocalWorcester Reporter

You can add Millbury Police to the “Wall of Shame.” The department was among several Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus funds to violate the law requiring them to file quarterly reports in fiscal 2012.

The “Wall of Shame” is the name given by Recovery.gov to the list of recipients who fail to submit quarterly spending reports as required under President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly referred to as the Stimulus Act. According to the independent government agency, which was established in February 2009, Millbury police did not file a report in the second fiscal quarter of 2012. The department was awarded $27,897 through the federal Department of Justice in July 2009. All recipients are mandated to file quarterly reports detailing, in part, how the money has been spent and how much is left.

‘Surprised’

“I’m kind of surprised that hasn’t been done,” Millbury Police Sgt. Donald Desourcy said. “It might be an oversight.”

Desourcy, who said he had previously overseen the filing of quarterly reports related to stimulus funding, said Officer Frank Piscitelli is now in charge of approving the paperwork. Piscitelli was not immediately available for comment and Provisional Chief Mark Moore was not at work.

Desourcy said former Police Chief Richard Handfield applied for the stimulus funding, which was used to pay for the department’s Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) classes and Drug Reduction Education and Mentoring (D.R.E.A.M.) program. The latter was formerly known as Project D.A.R.E. The money also helped pay for mountain bikes police have used on downtown patrols and at the Shoppes at Blackstone Valley shopping complex in Millbury.

“I know no money was spent last year when I did the quarterly reports,” Desourcy said. He estimated there is about $12-$13,000 left from the original stimulus package.

“I can’t speak the chief’s intent,” said Desourcy. “He very well could be funding one of those programs.”

Phone calls to state Sen. Michael Moore, D-Millbury, and state Rep. Paul Frost, R-Auburn, were not returned. Frost’s district includes Millbury.

Quarterly reports

However the Millbury Police Department spends it, the money must be accounted for in the next quarterly report, according to Cheryl Arvidson, assistant director of communications for Recovery.Gov. The agency tracks the spending of all funding from Obama’s $787-billion stimulus package. The Office of Management and Budget provides a list of recipients who do not file quarterly reports, which they must do until the funding has been exhausted.

Millbury police may well have just forgotten to file the report, Arvidson said.

“We have found many instances of a relatively small amount and that is an oversight,” she said. “But that’s why we post the names of recipients.”

The latest reports have been filed, but the agency has not yet compiled a non-compliance list for the past two quarters, Arvidsen said. It could take more than a month to compile that data and double check it to ensure no one is erroneously added to the list.

No penalties

Even when a recipient doesn’t file a report, there is no penalty, but that could change.

“That issue is addressed in pending legislation on Capitol Hill,” Arvidsen said. “One possibility is that the agency that grants the money could raise questions about future funding if regular, quarterly reports aren’t filed. The taxpayer has a right to know and see what is being done with their money, we consider these reports a very important part of the Recovery Act. We are calling these people out.”

Number declines

So far, she said, the strategy appears to be working. When the agency was first established and the lists first created, there were about 4,000 non-compliant recipients per quarter. Now, said Arvidsen, the number has plummeted to 370-400.

In fact, during the first reporting period in 2009, recipients failed to report 4,359 reports, according to Michael Wood, executive director of the Recovery Board. In a March blog entitled “Shaming the Scofflaws,” Wood wrote: “The Board decided that if recipients would thumb their noses, then it made sense to point the finger at them. We established a quarterly posting of non-compliers on Recovery.gov.”

“It has been very successful,” she said, noting that the initial response was less than welcoming. “People were confused by the whole thing. This was a new era of transparency for government. In the past, agencies were reporting their money, but to actually ask them to account for it was a completely new idea.”

Not sole offender

While Millbury police were the only Central Massachusetts recipients to land on the most recent non-compliant list, they weren’t the state’s only representatives. The most notable was Morpho Detection Inc., a high-tech security company with an office in Wilmington. Its main headquarters, however, is in France. Morpho received $51,084,254 in stimulus funding in two separate payments – $15,601.754 in September 2009 and a $35,482,500 package in April 2010. The company did not file reports for either award in the 2nd fiscal quarter of 2012.

A person answering the phone at the Wilmington office said no one there was able to answer any questions, and deferred all comments to the company’s France division. An e-mail to Nathalie Jullien, who is listed as deputy vice president of corporate communications on the company’s Web site, was not returned.

In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011, the town of Auburn did not file a report for its stimulus award of $67,597, which it received in July 2010. Like Millbury, it was through the Department of Justice.

Arvidsen said there is another reason recipients might not file a quarterly report, although she didn't thik it gave them a pass.

"Some recipients exhaust their stimulus funding and may not file a report," Arvidsen said. "They need to file a quarterly report until they spend all the money, and then they need to notify the funding agency that they have exhausted their stimulus."