The federal government has investigated Macon Police Department payouts that were drawn from a grant designed to help at-risk children, according to a letter sent to city officials this past summer.
In the letter, sent in July and acquired this week by The Telegraph, the Justice Department questions why the city spent 2002 Safe Schools Initiative grant funds to buy a digital camera, office divider panels, an automatic paper folder and to pay for a police conference in New Orleans.
City officials acknowledged a week ago that the federal government had accused Macon of misspending $350,000 from the grant, which funneled money to local churches to carry out the initiative. Some of the faith organizations' expenses also have been classified as questionable, according to the letter.
In the letter, the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General asked the city for more information about other expenses, including how certain salary amounts were determined, a list of who was issued grant-funded cell phones and a list of city employees who received computers and printers that were purchased with grant money.
Andrew Blascovich, spokesman for Mayor Robert Reichert, said it's difficult to comment on the letter's implications because many city officials are still trying to get up to speed on the grant. Reichert was not in office when the grant was awarded.
"We're learning a lot of this stuff at the same rate everyone else is," Blascovich said. "We don't know what the full body of work looks like. That (letter) was something sent last July to a previous administration."
Attached to the letter are invoices, receipts and other documentation showing nearly $9,000 worth of purchases the city made between Dec. 2, 2003, and Feb. 17, 2004. Special agent in charge David Glendinning wrote that the invoices include examples of "questioned expenditures made by the city of Macon."
The examples include:
• A May 2003 city invoice for $1,817 that includes a $649 digital camera.
Sgt. Melanie Hofmann, the police department's public information officer, requested a new camera to take departmental pictures earlier that year.
Her previous camera used diskettes that offered little storage space for pictures, according to a February 2003 request she wrote to then-Police Chief Rodney Monroe. An internal police department order form for the camera, signed by Monroe and former police grants coordinator Albert Stokes, includes the handwritten notation "Safe Schools Grant. Use Best Buy card."
When the camera was bought, Hofmann said Thursday, it remained in Stokes' office during the period that grant activities were going on. She used it only infrequently during that time, she said, and did not take possession of it until a month or two after the grant program ended.
Monroe left Macon for the Richmond, Va., police department in 2005. Stokes followed him there. Beyond a general statement from Monroe earlier this week saying he thinks the grant's rules were complied with, neither one has commented on the Safe Schools Initiative.
• A June 2003 city invoice for $1,942 that includes $1,002 worth of office divider panels.
In a memo to the police department's former director of fiscal management, Kellie High-Foster, Maj. Willie J. May requested the panels for the Youth and Intervention Division due to the addition of people and a need to reconfigure office space.
The panels would allow greater flexibility for various activities, May wrote.
• A January 2004 invoice for $1,200 that was paid to Maria Arvelo Lumpkin for "program evaluation."
At the time, Lumpkin lived in Macon, but she has since moved to Atlanta, where she is the interim director for student activities at Spelman College. She said Thursday that she provided training and performance evaluation for the department's Police Activity League, which sponsored youth activities such as Midnight Basketball, and for the Weed and Seed crime prevention program. Those programs are not part of the Safe Schools Initiative.
Lumpkin's task was to train staff in areas where the programs were deficient. She said Stokes asked her to perform the work. According to the invoice, the $1,200 represented partial payment. Lumpkin said she thought the total payment probably was no more than $3,000.
• A February 2004 invoice for $1,151.98 to pay the catering bill for a faith-based initiative breakfast meeting.
The breakfast, held the previous month, took place in a ballroom at the Wilson Convention Center and included 200 people, according to a request form for Macon Centreplex facilities.
Most of the bill was for a "deluxe breakfast buffet," which included chilled juice, bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, hash browns, cheese grits, biscuits and gravy, assorted danishes, coffee and fruit.
• A November 2003 city invoice for $1,122.33 that paid all or part of a salary for a temporary employee.
The employee worked under High-Foster and was paid for 57 hours - about a week and a half.
• A March 2003 invoice for $795 to pay registration fees for a Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Grants Program in New Orleans.
The two-day program, held in April 2003, was put on by the Virginia-based Performance Institute, a private, nonpartisan think tank that says it seeks to improve government performance, accountability and transparency. The program was held at the Wyndham Riverfront Hotel.
• A June 2003 city invoice for $750 to buy an automatic paper folder.
• A January 2004 city invoice for $150.
The police department used the money to buy a full-page advertisement in the 2004 edition of a magazine published by The James Wimberly Institute of Black Studies and History Inc.
Federal officials also have suggested inappropriate spending because some purchases were made after July 31, 2003, when the grant should have been closed out.
Camille Jefferson, a project director with the police department who was a liaison to the churches involved in the grant from May 2003 until about April 2004, said she remembered reimbursement requests coming in after July 2003. Presumably those requests were paid, she said.
"I know for a fact that I processed or had requests coming in after that," she said. "Otherwise I wouldn't have had a job."
In response to an Open Records Act request, Macon officials released documents Thursday that they said indicated the city was permitted to spend grant money after July 2003. In e-mails last year, Christina Palacios, the former director of Macon police administration, wrote to the Office of the Inspector General that an April 2005 letter granting the city an extension had previously been overlooked because it had been misfiled.
The letter that city officials have said her e-mail references is from a program manager in the Office of Justice Programs, which mentions a "no cost extension" and says he is approving amended budget items.
Macon city attorneys Thursday did not release copies of past subpoenas or search warrants that have been served on the city, arguing that they are exempt from open records law because they are required by the federal government to be kept confidential and are part of an ongoing investigation.
Senior city officials will further discuss the investigation with the U.S. Attorney's Office on Tuesday.
Staff Writer Travis Fain contributed to this report.
To contact writer Matt Barnwell, call 744-4251.
