A legal dispute between two Hawaii state agencies came to an end Wednesday with a state Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs over the Office of the Auditor.
In the States, COVID Spending Heads Off to the (Robo-Dog) Races
Forty all-terrain vehicles, five utility terrain vehicles, and 18 utility trailers: $626,000.
Using public funds earmarked for coronavirus relief to buy these items: priceless.
That’s just a fraction of supposedly COVID-related spending by a single police department, in Honolulu, Hawaii. But it hints at what authorities will find as they begin to comb through the receipts from the emergency spending binge of public offices across the country during the pandemic.
In March 2020, Congress passed the roughly $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act.
Government watchdogs, critics and the media have so far focused on federal loans to businesses and unemployment scams, finding hundreds of millions of squandered dollars. Less scrutinized is how state and local offices themselves deployed the money. Also tapped were the emergency funds of some states, again opening the door to misspendin