A congressional committee last month launched an investigation into whether the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) violated its bidding process in order to give competitive grants to favored organizations.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked the Justice Department for documents relating to a January Youth Today story that said OJJDP bypassed the top-scoring bidders for National Juvenile Justice program grants, giving money instead to bidders that its staff ranked far lower. (See “For Juvenile Justice, a Panel of One.”)
The story also raised questions about whether the office circumvented the Justice Department’s peer review process by having the bids scored by staffers rather than by an external panel.
The committee’s probe extends to all OJJDP discretionary grants in fiscal 2007. Among the documents the committee requested in a letter from its chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.):
• A list of all applicants for discretionary grants, the proposed funding amount, whether the application was subject to an external peer review, the applicant’s evaluation scores and the amount funded, if any.
• All documents related to the award of discretionary grants in 2007, including applications, records and notes from bidders’ technical evaluations, agency decision memoranda, and communications within OJJDP and between OJJDP officials and “any outside entity.”
• All communications from OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores “relating to all grants considered for awards.”
• Justice Department and OJJDP policies governing the grant competition and awards process.
“The Department is reviewing the committee’s request, and we look forward to working with the committee on this in the near future,” said department spokeswoman Summer Duncan.
The probe was requested by Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), who was approached by administrators at Winona State University after the Youth Today story was published. The university’s proposal for its National Child Protection Training Center was ranked fourth by OJJDP staff, with an average score of 96.5, but it didn’t win a grant. The university is in Walz’s district, and he helped get the center $1.2 million in earmarks in the 2008 Justice Department budget, including $446,000 from OJJDP.
The committee also asked the Justice Department for a briefing on how it awarded the 2007 grants.
Reactions
The Youth Today story, based on OJJDP documents and interviews with current and former OJJDP staffers, listed the scores of 104 bidders. Among the findings:
• The four highest-scoring bids did not get grants. Among the top 24 bids by score, only three won grants.
• One winner, the Best Friends Foundation, ranked 53rd, putting it behind 43 bids that OJJDP rejected. Another winner, the World Golf Foundation, scored lower than 38 bids that were not funded.
• The bids were scored by OJJDP staffers in about two days, even though the grants’ Request for Proposals said the bids would be evaluated by a peer review process, which typically means a panel of experts from outside the agency. Federal law and OJJDP guidelines require, with some exceptions, that competitive bids be reviewed by panels of peers who are not employed by the agency giving the grants.
Word of the investigation was welcomed by bidders who did not win grants. Some had previously complained about how OJJDP awards grants and determines its priorities.
“I think it’s wonderful. It’s too bad it didn’t happen sooner,” said Earl Dunlap, CEO of the National Partnership for Juvenile Services.
“I’m delighted,” said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. “I believe the circumstances of the grants were highly questionable and probably violated a number of rules.
“When you have a national competition and you so flout the merits” of the bids, “that’s not good for the credibility of the Justice Department or the federal government.”
Several of those who did not win grants said they asked OJJDP for their evaluations last fall, but have not received them, despite repeated requests.
