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Monday, January 31, 2000
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When a new federal program dispenses more than $1 billion to about 25,000 applicants in its first 18 months, overseers look closely for administrative foul-ups or worse. With so many hands in the pot, there's potential for fraud and abuse.
The General Accounting Office, Congress' fiscal watchdog agency, has sharply criticized the E-rate program's start-up operation.
Judy England-Joseph, who heads up the GAO's telecommunications reviews, said investigators remain "very curious about how the first year went" for the E-rate program.
She said the GAO still is trying to determine if schools and libraries are asking for discounts beyond what they deserve, and are not getting the service they paid for.
But there has been no evidence of anything worse.
"At this stage of the game we can truthfully say that there's no fraud and abuse in this [program]," said Hank Marockie, West Virginia's superintendent of schools and vicechairman of the Schools and Libraries Committee, part of the private, not-for-profit Universal Service Administration Co., which oversees the E-rate program.
USAC spokeswoman Jodie Pozo-Olana describes the GAO's concerns as "water under the bridge" and says the problems were only first-year start-up snafus.
But GAO officials are worried that the FCC's fiscal year 2000 plan "still fails to provide well-defined goals, performance targets, and measures" for the E-rate program, according to a report issued in March.
Marockie doesn't foresee any serious problems.
"There are stories, but every time we check out a story, we can't find any substance to the [allegations of ] fraud and abuse."