Dauphin County is overhauling a multimillion-dollar grant program following a PennLive investigation that exposed serious flaws, including lax oversight and grants to politically connected businesses.
The county’s gaming grant program, via which county officials have doled out more than $150 million since 2008, is being completely revamped, Chief Clerk Eric Hagarty announced at a public meeting Wednesday.
The new rules will:
- Forbid grants to businesses. Only nonprofits and government entities will be eligible for funding.
- Allow the county to revoke grants if projects don’t happen, recover assets purchased with grant funds — say, if a grantee uses a grant to buy equipment and then goes out of business — and claw back money if necessary. The same rules will apply to the county’s tourism grant program, which also awards millions of dollars in grants.
- Require grant recipients to certify that the money was used appropriately, submit progress reports every six months, disclose any conflicts of interest among grant recipients and contractors they hire, provide close-out reports at the end of the grant and, if serious questions arise, submit a formal audit by an accountant.
- Fully digitize the application process. The county will publicly post all applications, progress reports and close-out reports online, as well as aggregated scoring results from the gaming advisory board. The advisory board reviews the applications and makes recommendations to the county commissioners on which projects to fund. Previously, grant applications and other documentation were available only through public records requests, and the county did not collect progress or close-out reports.
- Update the grant scoring matrix. The new matrix, which allows applicants to earn up to 102 points, prioritizes projects that fulfill a public need (20 points) and have a clear scope and budget (15 points). Fewer points are available for things like leveraging other funds (10 points), having a connection to Hollywood Casino (10 points) and demonstrating community support (five points). Attending a pre-application workshop, which in past years held one of the highest point values, is worth just two points.
All three county commissioners spoke in favor of the changes…