This is one taxpayer-funded highway to hell.
The U.S. Department of Energy Office of the Inspector General has concluded that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s summer 2023 four-day electric vehicle road trip from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Memphis, Tennessee — called “People Powered: Summer Road Trip Brought to You by President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda” — was ripe with waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money.
In January 2024, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs asked the inspector general to review the energy department’s internal management controls concerning employee travel and expense reimbursements. The examples accompanying the request related to travel expenses from the EV road trip that Granholm, Michigan’s governor from 2003 until 2011, took.
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The report ripped the spending, saying the department’s “personnel have a duty to be conscientious stewards of taxpayer funds.”
The inspector general found examples of staff lodging exceeding per diem rates, travel expenses not included in the original authorization and potential misuse of government-issued travel cards. The trip also included inadequate justifications for potential departures from government policy.
Issues included reimbursements exceeding the energy department’s 15% tip policy, travel vouchers with incorrect information and the failure to submit “cost comparisons for travel to and from alternate locations” as required.
“We determined that travel vouchers from Department personnel involved in the road trip contained lodging expenses that exceeded Government per diem rates,” Anthony Cruz, assistant inspector general for inspections, intelligence oversight and special projects, wrote in the audit. “Additionally, we identified some travel vouchers for which travel expenses exceeded 15 percent of the authorized cost.
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“Further, we found several travel vouchers for which Government-issued travel cards were not used for expenses, as required,” Cruz added. “We also identified other issues separate from the concerns expressed by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Accountability.”
The OIG recommended that the energy secretary’s chief of staff “ensure that travelers and approving officials from Program Offices who participate in official travel with the Secretary” sufficiently “review travel authorizations and vouchers for accuracy of travel expenses.” Additionally, they should “receive refresher training regarding the FTR and Department Travel Manual requirements and responsibilities.”
In response, Granholm’s chief of staff called the escapade “perhaps the most challenging and dynamic domestic trip undertaken by Secretary Granholm and her supporting staff during the entire Biden-Harris Administration.”
The “OIG report is further evidence of the Biden Administration failing to protect taxpayer dollars and leaving funds exposed to serious waste, fraud, and abuse,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Kentucky, said in a statement.
“After Democrats rushed trillions of dollars in government spending without guardrails, the Department of Energy and Secretary Granholm embarked on a taxpayer-funded EV summer road trip to showcase its radical Green New Deal priorities,” Comer added. “This publicity stunt not only illustrates how out of touch the Biden Administration is with the consequences of its policies, but came at the expense of American taxpayers.”
The trip was controversial at the time.
In a move that was not particularly empowering for the people, a department staffer parked a gasoline-powered vehicle, blocking an EV charging station in Grovetown, Ga., to save it for the approaching energy secretary, a practice known as “ICEing.” A family with a baby was unable to use the charging station, NPR reported at the time.
“There is literally a non-electric car that is taking up a space,” a female who called the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office via 911 said, according to The Augusta Press. “They said they are saving the space for somebody else, and they are holding up a whole bunch of people who need to charge their cars.”
The sheriff was powerless, as it was not illegal in Georgia for a gas-powered vehicle to use an EV charging space.