Baltimore Flush With Federal Cash, Can’t Tell Where It All Went

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Baltimore Flush With Federal Cash, Can’t Tell Where It All Went
by Petr Svab
August 6, 2019

The city government has long failed to account for how it spends state and federal grant money. A 2014 audit revealed bookkeeping so deficient, it wasn’t possible to track what $40 million in grants from federal, state, and other sources was spent on.

The 2018 audit found similar problems: “Grant money coming into government coffers is not balancing out with what city agencies are spending,” as the Baltimore Sun put it.

Baltimore auditor Audrey Askew, who came a year earlier from a private auditing firm, warned the city could lose access to grants, which make up about a sixth of its $2.8 billion budget. A year later, however, Askew abruptly resigned, offering only a cryptic explanation.

”Baltimore will never know why, but they know why,” she told BaltimoreBrew, declining to specify who “they” were.

“I am a person of integrity, and I am honest. Anything that alters that, I don’t do.”

A source told the news website that Askew was getting incorrect or unsubstantiated numbers from the city’s Finance Department and was pressed to “write-off” some federal grant money to balance the books.

She refused.

Two months later, on April 25, the FBI and IRS raided offices in the City Hall and the home of then-Mayor Catherine Pugh. She was already on an indefinite leave of absence for about three weeks amid a self-dealing scandal.

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