Federal anti-meth grants sometimes miss their mark, according to audit

WASHINGTON -- Some states with significant methamphetamine problems have not received their share of federal money because the bulk of a grant program was steered by lawmakers to favored projects in their districts, the Justice Department inspector general said Thursday.

More than $179 million in anti-meth money administered by the department -- 84 percent of the grant funds -- has been earmarked, as the practice is known, by members of Congress for programs in their states and districts, inspector general Glenn A. Fine said.

"As a result of the significant use of congressional earmarks in this program, funding is not always directed to the areas of the country with the most significant meth problem," Fine said in a report examining the grant program from 1998 to 2005.

The Bush administration has proposed ending most meth-related earmarks in the budget for 2007. Lawmakers have indicated they are unlikely to go along.

One example cited by Fine: Missouri ranked second, behind California, in seizing 11,859 meth labs between 1998 and 2004. But it was tenth in grants received with $3.7 million.

Texas and Illinois were 10th and 11th in the number of labs seized, but 23rd and 25th, respectively, in money from the meth initiative.

Meanwhile, the Sioux City, Iowa, police department was given $10 million for a training program that Fine said was not focused on meth or any drug. Instead, "classes focused on enhancing general law enforcement skills, such as interviewing and self-defense," he said.

In Vermont, the State Police used more than half of their $2.4 million grant for a task force to combat heroin. In Hawaii, where police seized 76 meth labs over seven years, a nonprofit group used $8.4 million in money targeted at meth for a variety of anti-drug programs.

Fine also faulted Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, for its oversight of the program. The audit said there was a lack of coordination between officials in the COPS office, weaknesses in the database used to manage and track grants and insufficient and inconsistent monitoring of recipients of the money.

In a response to the audit, COPS director Carl Peed said Fine's staff took an overly rigid view of the grant program's standards for awarding money. But Peed agreed that his office needed to improve its monitoring.

"The COPS office rightfully looks to the individual grantee to identify what its most pressing needs are," Peed said.