A Nebraska agency misspent nearly $8 million in federal aid when it sent energy-assistance payments directly to customers instead of their utility companies, and some of the checks were later cashed at Wal-Mart stores, restaurants, a liquor store and a keno parlor, state auditors said Monday.
Auditor Mike Foley said the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services violated its own rules when it mailed the checks to recipients. Department officials knew that some of the recipients were dead, and in some cases hadn't been alive for more than a year, Foley said.
Foley said the payments were made in an apparent scramble to beat a looming federal deadline to spend the money. The payments were made in haste in late August 2011, five weeks before the cutoff.
"Nebraska taxpayers are also federal taxpayers, and I think they will be very disappointed," Foley said. "Sometimes, these programs are not administered as well as they should be, and the monies that are supposed to go to the social safety net are not spent properly."
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