‘Outsourcing’ Duties to U-Md. Not Illegal, Agency Chief Says
by Lori Montgomery, Washington Post
The director of a Maryland anti-crime agency said he was circumventing a state hiring freeze, not violating federal law, when his agency gave the University of Maryland millions in federal grant money and then instructed the university to use it to hire nearly 40 people for his staff.
Stephen P. Amos, executive director of the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention, said state officials have not authorized an increase in his staff for at least two years. At the same time, federal grants flowing into the office have nearly doubled from $20 million to almost $40 million a year, Amos said, vastly increasing his workload.
Barred by the state from hiring extra workers directly, Amos said he “outsourced” many administrative duties to the University of Maryland, awarding the university millions of dollars in grants for the specific purpose of doubling his staff.
Amos said federal rules authorize him to make those hires, and state budget officials said yesterday that they do not violate state law. But federal grants experts said the circuitous arrangement is unusual, and it has become the focus of a federal grand jury investigation seeking to determine whether the anti-crime office has misused federal funds.
“It raises questions,” said Robert Lloyd, a private consultant who has worked for 30 years with federal agencies and grant recipients. “Whether there’s actually anything wrong sounds like it remains to be seen.”
Amos offered the detailed defense of his agency in an interview this week. In the past, he has said he used grant money to hire staff members because many of the jobs were temporary and it made no sense to offer the workers permanent state positions, he said.
The crime control office is overseen by Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D) and is charged with implementing many of Townsend’s crime-fighting initiatives. Last week, Townsend asked the state attorney general to clarify the rules governing its relationship with the university.
Townsend, who is running for governor, has dismissed the federal probe as “political garbage” produced by a Republican prosecutor in league with her likely GOP opponent, U.S. Rep. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.
The prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiagio, has declined to comment on the investigation. But Ehrlich has said that he believes DiBiagio has uncovered a “political slush fund” fueled with federal grant money and “dedicated to Townsend’s election.”
Sources familiar with the investigation say authorities are trying to determine whether crime control employees hired with federal grant money either did no meaningful work or handled political tasks to benefit Townsend’s campaign for governor, a violation of federal law.
One former employee, Margaret T. Burns, has said that she did political research for Townsend’s campaign while being paid $68,000 a year in federal funds channeled through the University of Maryland. Earlier this week, Burns said federal investigators told her that she would probably be called to testify before the grand jury.
Since January 2000, professors in College Park have received more than $15.5 million in grants from the crime control agency. Portions of those grants were used to hire at least 70 employees at the direction of the crime control office, according to university officials, including Burns and 38 people who report to Amos’s Towson headquarters.
The state has funded an additional 38 full-time employees at the crime control office for the past two years, plus about nine contractual employees who do not receive pensions or health benefits.
Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) declared a hiring freeze in October. Yesterday, a spokesman for Glendening declined to comment on the expansion of the crime control office.
In an interview Thursday, Amos said he has “absolute confidence” that each of the employees hired through the university is doing “meaningful, substantive, well-documented crime-fighting work.” At the same time, he confirmed that he has retained a lawyer.
Amos responded angrily to university officials at the College Park campus who said that they never asked for the grant money and that they do not know what the extra employees do because most report directly to Amos.
“They’re saying they’re not asking for these employees, that we’re directing them to hire them. I take exception to that,” Amos said, adding that he finds the university’s position “quite frankly offensive.”
Amos said that university officials have a “partnership” with the crime control office and that they review the credentials of every job applicant seeking work under the grants. University officials must agree to bring those applicants on board and to sign their paychecks, Amos said.
“Are some of these positions more directed by me? Yes,” he said. “But do I make the decision exclusively? The answer is no.”
University spokesman George Cathcart agreed that the university has a partnership with Amos. But within the confines of that partnership, Amos often called the shots, Cathcart said.
“They would call and say they had particular jobs they wanted done,” Cathcart said. “They sent us job descriptions, and we wrote requests to fund those decisions.”
Cathcart said the university did evaluate job applicants and can confirm that “everyone hired was qualified to do the jobs they were hired to do.”
But as to whether those employees were needed and what duties they actually performed, he said, “we trusted the governor’s office to provide us with that information.”