District of Columbia: D.C. public schools inappropriately used gas utility contract for renovations

Original publisher: [Washington, D.C.] : U.S. General Accounting Office, [2001] OCLC Number: (OCoLC)54869268 Subject: School buildings -- Washington (D.C.) -- Maintenance and repair. Excerpt: ... •�Required approvals from the District of Columbia's Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority were not obtained. The authority, also known as the Control Board, was established in 1995 to repair the District's failing financial conditions and to improve the 5 effectiveness of its various entities. The Board is responsible for reviewing and approving certain contracts awarded by the District. One criterion triggering review by the Board is contracts awarded on a sole-source basis. Officials on the Board told us that they should have reviewed all of the orders placed under the Washington Gas contract because they consider the contract to be a sole source procurement. They told us that they had reviewed only one of the orders, for emergency boiler repairs in 1997. After that time, the school system did not forward any subsequent orders under the contract to the Board for review. An additional oversight mechanism within the school system is the Office of Finance, which is concerned with the District's financial health and approves funding for contract orders as well as payments to contractors. The school system's Office of Finance questioned the use of the Washington Gas contract in July and August 2000 because of the large number of orders being made to Washington Gas. However, it approved orders after receiving assurances from the contracting officer that the orders were justified. We believe these assurances were insufficient because they did not show that the work was within the scope of the contract and they were not supported by justification for using a sole-source contract or pricing analyses. As figure 2 illustrates, the school system substantially increased the value of the orders once the Office of Finance continued approving orders based on...