Millions of dollars used for Atlanta job funding could soon be lost.

The City of Atlanta may have to give up $11.3 million for allegedly mishandling federal grant money intended to help people find jobs, according to an article by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. An audit by the United States Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General found the Atlanta Workforce Development Agency used the money to make contracts without competitive bids, make questionable expenditures and supply services to ineligible recipients.

The audit recommends the Labor Department recover the $11.3 million in federal Welfare-to-Work and Workforce Investment Act funds that should have been used to pay for job training and placement services.

“The city is confident that we provided sufficient financial controls and systems to plan, measure, implement and evaluate federal grant-funded programs,” Executive Director Deborah Lum said in the article. “There is no final decision from the Department of Labor yet, and we will continue to work with them until a final decision is made.”

The city now has an opportunity to submit documents disputing the audit by March 15, and will be given a second chance to submit records before June 15.

Regardless of whether or not the city mishandled funding, people in the area could use help finding jobs in Atlanta, as many careers have been lost there during the last few months. During December 2008, the city’s unemployment rate increased from 6.9 percent to 7.6 percent.

During December 2008, the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta area had a total non-farm employment of 2,412,600 workers, according to the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is down from 2,421,700 workers during November 2008 and a 3.3 percent decrease from last year.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 11:53 am and is filed under jobs, Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.