Justice Department grantees lag in stimulus funds reporting

Recipients of Recovery Act funds who failed to file a mandatory quarterly spending report were posted Wednesday on a “wall of shame” on the website updated by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.

Continuing an earlier pattern, grantees serviced by the Justice Department had the poorest compliance rate, according to a blog post from the board’s executive director, Michael Wood.

For the quarter ending Sept. 30, recipients submitted 105,784 spending reports, and general compliance was “excellent,” Wood said. Of the 353 recipients who failed to file, 120, or 34 percent, were in Justice Department programs. Delinquent grantees included police departments, sheriff’s offices, and city and county governments.

Ten recipients, four of them government entities, have skipped the reports in three or more quarters. Reasons given for noncompliance ranged from lack of access to a computer, to being on vacation to traveling abroad. The recipient of a $3.2 million Labor Department grant wrote back, “Grantee president responsible for approving report had deceased; no backup plan in place.’’