(Newser)
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An obscure agency of the State Department has doled out tens of millions of dollars around the world for programs designed to fight climate change, but it's done a remarkably bad job of making sure the money isn't being wasted, according to an internal audit picked up by Fox News. The inspector general's report sampled some of the more than $200 million spent by the OES/EGC (or the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs and its Office of Global Change) between 2006 and 2010 and discovered a routine lack of oversight and shoddy record-keeping.
In bureaucrat-speak, "the department may not always have reasonable assurance that federal funds were spent in accordance with the grant award; that the grant recipient performed program activities as dictated in the grant award; and that the program’s indicators, goals and objectives were achieved," says the report. What's more, White House spending on such programs has only increased since 2010, writes Fox's George Russell, meaning the "problem could be much, much bigger."
