Ethan Barton of the Daily Caller explains that the public has been kept in the dark about problems at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
A government watchdog withheld at least 14 reports that revealed department-wide problems that allow fraud and waste at a cabinet-level agency, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s (TheDCNF) Investigative Group has learned.
The reports concern issues plaguing the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), including felons illegally living in federally-funded homes, tax fraud and millions of dollars sitting in unused bank accounts for years. The department’s 2017 budget is $48.9 billion and it has 8,375 employees.
The HUD Inspector General (IG) posted its systemic implication reports – documents that reveal opportunities for fraud in agency programs – to its website. A comparison between that listing and another TheDCNF previously obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request showed 14 reports from 2011 through 2014 were excluded from the IG’s the website.
At least three of those reports were also kept from HUD, meaning top department officials may not even be aware of the problems and suggested remedies.
