A long-troubled Atlanta jobs agency has flouted government guidelines and mismanaged programs, leaving it at risk of once again losing millions of dollars in federal grants and possibly liable for paying back misspent funds, a just-released audit says.
WorkSource Atlanta managers and employees mismanaged programs and money, from spending $7,466 on unauthorized meals to incurring $126,000 in bills for unqualified, undocumented training, the audit says.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and city officials couldn’t be reached for comment Monday afternoon.
WorkSource Atlanta is supposed to provide — or contract with others to provide — job training and additional support to Atlantans who are young, laid-off, disabled or chronically unemployed. But for more than a decade, the agency has been accused of failing at its mission. It has been investigated for everything from using employees for a mayoral campaign to funding a fake jobs program, a violation uncovered by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A 2013 city audit recommended that Atlanta shut down WorkSource, noting the agency’s bad management and lack of compliance with federal regulations. Another city-requested study described WorkSource as a poorly led and unorganized agency.
Still, year after year, city leaders have defended WorkSource. They requested the new audit after last year’s problems, which included the loss of a $1.3 million jobs training grant after WorkSource failed to spend it by a deadline.
The newly released audit found that WorkSource stands to lose a $3.6 million U.S. Department of Labor training grant if not spent by a June deadline. The agency scrambled in 2019 to spend the money by contracting with a software development and training company to teach young people computer programming in the city’s TechHire program. But the agreement was never executed, and federal officials put a freeze on the program late last year after WorkSource dropped ball.
“As of Sept. 2019 the agency had spent a total of $369,000 on program overhead costs and has served nine clients,” the audit noted.
WorkSource employees stood before city council members earlier this year, saying they were optimistic the TechHire program would be restarted soon.
The agency may owe another $214,680 to the state for having missed a grant-spending deadline in 2019.
The audit also said that WorkSource employees reported wrong numbers to the state in its final reports on how it spent grants. That includes $426,578 used after the grant period ended, which is not allowed.
“It appears that these adjustments were made to reconcile expenditures to state closeout reports,” the audit says.
The appointed board overseeing and guiding the agency, required to meet quarterly, has not met regularly since June 2018.
The audit says WorkSource was making little use of a $306,000 mobile unit.
Staff members have consistently failed to complete or keep accurate records and financial reports as required by city, state and federal guidelines. Between 2014 and 2019 WorkSource requested $24 million in expenditure transactions but gave no information to identify services rendered or who was paid, according to the audit.
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