A report released today by the State Auditor’s Office found several shortcomings in the state’s Division of Public Defender Services (PDS) with perhaps the most sensational example being the misuse of $22,561 in state funds for a 6-hour annual training meeting attended by employees and their families that included only 45 minutes of work-related training.
“State agency spending for employee events should primarily utilize those funds for work-related purposes,” concluded the auditors. “PDS incurred an unnecessary expenditure that appears to represent abuse of state funds.”
The meeting took place in 2023, during the tenure of since fired TaShun Bowden-Lewis, at the 200-acre resort Holiday Hill in Prospect, though the report only referred to it as an “offsite recreational facility.” The report said that both employees and their families were invited to partake, and engaged in various party activities such as airbrush tattoos, pony rides, basketball and cornhole tournaments, family kickball, rowboating and pickleball.
The report found that $12,000 in state funds was spent on the attendance of non-state employees, who made up over half of the attendees. The report found that of the 340 people registered for the event, only 142 were PDS employees, while 198 were spouses, partners or children.
PDS’s response, per the report, was that “management thought this expenditure was allowable.” The department assured state auditors that its training day for fiscal year 2024 has been structured as “a day of training on various pertinent topics held at a central location for only Division employees.”
In addition to the misappropriation of state funds, the report also found DPS to have improperly promoted several employees, which was one of the deciding factors in Bowden-Lewis’s firing. Auditors assessed ten of DPS’s 71 hires and ten of its 29 promotions from 2022-2023, and found one instance of PDS officials changing a job description without the approval of the PDS Commission, for the purpose of hiring a candidate that otherwise would not have qualified. It also found PDS officials have tried to obfuscate this by entering the change in title as a mere pay-rate adjustment rather than a promotion.
The auditors found that this may have the effect of there being “less assurance that PDS promoted the most qualified candidates.” They suggested PDS to “strengthen internal controls over promotions and obtain proper approval from the PDS Commission prior to changing a job description.”
PDS disagreed with this finding, claiming that “the employee’s movement to Acting HR Director was not a promotion, but rather was a temporary service in a higher classification.”
Auditors found several other procedural issues with DPS, such as lax documentation requirements for employee medical leave, carelessness regarding paperwork that may have led the provision of public defender services to an untold number of defendants who should not have qualified, failure by DPS to submit state-mandated reports, a lack of internal controls over postage, and missing dual employment forms.
“For the areas audited, we identified deficiencies in internal controls, apparent noncompliance with laws, regulations, contracts and grant agreements, policies, or procedures, and a need for improvement in management practices and procedures that we deemed to be reportable,” concluded the report.
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Excellent
Important but more concerned with the 100k+ (so far) for a single corrupt PD employee (there are several others). There was training at the Public Defenders event, maybe an effort to boost morale? They receive very little for the critical work they do.
Important but more concerned with the 100k+ (so far) for a single corrupt EL PD employee (there are several others). There was training at the Public Defenders event, maybe an effort to boost morale? They receive very little for the critical work they do.
Just one more example of the lack of accountability and mismanagement of our tax dollars. Governor Lamont and the Democratic legislature do not care about the abuse of the taxpayer but are always ready to steal more of our money by raising taxes.