The Social Security Administration, SSA, says “the information shown on www.recovery.gov under Agency Reporting incorrectly lists the Ticket to Work grants as ARRA funded, which they are not.”
The “Ticket to Work Grant” is a $300,000 grant awarded to the Ohio Legal Rights Service, OLRS, by the SSA. Ohio Watchdog followed this particular grant to monitor where the money awarded to phantom congressional districts was going.
The $300,000 grant awarded to OLRS was listed on www.recovery.gov as an American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, ARRA, grant reported to them by the SSA. But, the SSA said it was not funded with ARRA money in this e-mail response:
Ohio Watchdog asked for further clarification from the SSA since the federal website, www.recovery.gov, had the grant listed as being funded with ARRA money. In an e-mail, Mark Lassiter, with the National Press Office of the SSA, said, “We have not awarded any grants from the ARRA stimulus funding to any organization and have never reported this funding as such.”
So, how did the information become listed as being funded with ARRA money? Lassiter says the information was incorrectly transferred by the General Services Adminstration, GSA to www.recovery.gov.
“We notified GSA of the error and they corrected the mistake on the USAspending.gov web site on November 30, but GSA has not yet corrected the Recovery.gov web site. We continue to work with GSA and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to get the error corrected on Recovery.gov,” Lassiter said.
The OLRS and the State of Ohio Office of Inspector General were not clear as to where the $300,000 grant came from either. According to a top official at the Ohio OIG ARRA money being transferred directly from a federal agency or department to a non-profit or other non-state agency in Ohio is not something the Ohio OIG can investigate because it is out of their jurisdiction.
