The Kansas Department of Commerce operated an open-ended job growth program for five years that awarded $25 million without defining boundaries for making financial awards and in some cases didn’t mandate a formal application nor hold recipients accountable for delivering economic growth, state auditors said Monday.
Under the Kansas Job Creation Program Fund created in 2011 to provide cash awards to companies to help create jobs and foster growth, the Kansas Legislature’s division of post audit said, the commerce department failed to develop written policy to dictate the size of cash awards and how recipients were to be selected. State law didn’t establish criteria.
Commerce personnel considered the program a “deal-closing” mechanism and didn’t make creation of jobs or economic activity a condition of grant approval for all recipients, the audit said.
(Read more: News – The Topeka Capital-Journal)
