Results of the first audit of Baltimore’s Safe Streets program revealed the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement had weak processes to prevent duplicate payments and overpayments to contractors.
Safe Streets, overseen by MONSE and operated by subcontractors, is a program that relies on community members to mediate violence without guns.
The city’s Department of Audits found three separate instances in FY 2022 and FY 2023 where MONSE made duplicate payments to subcontractors totalling $290,357. During a presentation before the Board of Estimates, City Auditor Josh Pasch explained that 100 payments were examined as part of the biennial audit, meaning that in 3% of instances, MONSE was found making duplicate payments.
The city did recover all of the duplicate funds. This is the first biennial audit for MONSE. Biennial audits examine the past two fiscal years.
“As a baseline, it actually wasn't that bad. It showed that they had already made some efforts at self improvement, and more importantly, they were completely open to all of the audit department's recommendations about further improvements they could make to their own controls,” said Comptroller Bill Henry speaking after the BOE presentation. “So in that regard, it's kind of a positive. I will say the issue with the duplicate payments is a serious one, but not one that is specific to MONSE.”
The city did recover all of the duplicate funds, according to MONSE, and the agency says it is already creating policies for verification of payment and activity logs.
The audit did uncover additional issues.The mayor’s public safety department had no process for verifying daily activity logs and payroll registers for subrecipients.
“Based on auditor’s calculations, from July 1, 2021 to January 31, 2024, MONSE made estimated reimbursement of $257,322 to subrecipients without validating the daily activities of the subrecipients’ employees for 180 of 271 samples, or 66 percent,” auditors wrote in the report.
Ultimately, the audit found no evidence of fraud but warned that MONSE was making itself susceptible to fraud if it did not heed recommendations from the Department of Audits.
After the Board of Estimates meeting, MONSE Director Stefanie Mavronis addressed the audit results and an investigation released Tuesday by the Office of the Inspector General that found previous MONSE employees told subcontractors to write fictitious names on contracts. Mavronis confirmed that one person was terminated as a result of that report. Mavronis was not in charge of MONSE at the time those incidents occurred.
The audit and OIG report are an opportunity for MONSE to improve its oversight functions, said Mavronis.
“This is in no way a reflection on the work that our frontline safe street staff does. So we want to make sure, as city government, we're doing our piece so that in no way we're casting a shadow on that important work,” she said.
Many of the community members employed by Safe Streets as violence interrupters or site supervisors are formerly incarcerated or have had relationships with various gangs– positions that MONSE has repeatedly said makes them best equipped to deal with people likely to engage in violence.
City Council President Nick Mosby praised the work of the audit department and that these audits “should” be done but also pressed the city to hold other subcontractors to the same standards. Mosby said Safe Streets workers often wear a metaphorical “scarlet letter” because of their pasts.
“I think it's critical for us to ensure again because of that we aren’t putting additional policies and procedures over their heads that are different than those we put over other grantees,” said Mosby.
