{"id":40193,"date":"2013-06-28T08:01:25","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T13:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/?p=40193"},"modified":"2013-06-28T08:01:25","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T13:01:25","slug":"county-frustrated-with-federal-officials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2013\/06\/28\/county-frustrated-with-federal-officials\/","title":{"rendered":"County frustrated with federal officials"},"content":{"rendered":"

DAVE MOSIER\/<\/strong>independent editor<\/em><\/p>\n

The frustration is mounting for the Van Wert County Board of Commissioners over a mandate to repay $365,000 in federal grant money for what county officials call a minor paperwork error.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is seeking repayment of a grant awarded to the county for a sewer project along U.S. 127 and Ohio 118 south of Van Wert. The reason for the decision is the failure to file an environmental impact study prior to the release of funds for the project.<\/p>\n

Commissioner Thad Lichtensteiger said that, in his opinion, the issue is a minor one, since the study was completed on time, but just wasn\u2019t filed by the time money was released for the project. He also added that the money was used for the purpose intended.<\/p>\n

While other grant funding for the approximately $1.5-million project does not have to be repaid, HUD officials are adamant that the county repay the money they provided for the project. Doing so, though, would create a big hole filled with red ink in the middle of the county\u2019s current-year budget.<\/p>\n

Lichtensteiger said repaying the grant as mandated would leave the county looking at a $180,000 budget deficit this year — a big fiscal headache for the current commissioners, none of whom were in office when the error occurred back in 2009.<\/p>\n

While everyone the commissioners have talked to think the problem should be easy to solve, none of them have been able to do so. Those who have weighed in on behalf of the county include U.S. Senators Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown and U.S. Representative Bob Latta, as well as Ohio Senator Cliff Hite.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone we talk to has the same reaction,\u201d Lichtensteiger said. \u201cIt looks like common-sense stuff that ought to be waived, but it\u2019s statutory and there\u2019s nothing we can do.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, when you\u2019re dealing with the (federal) government, our hands are tied,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

All three commissioners said they feel there\u2019s no good reason all of the $365,000 should have to be repaid for just a minor paperwork error, adding that HUD itself is also culpable in the situation, since it issued the funds without checking to see if the county had dotted all the I\u2019s and crossed the T\u2019s needed to receive the money.<\/p>\n

The commissioners say they have appealed to Ohio Governor John Kasich to see if he can provide some sort of waiver on repaying the grant, but none of them said they were hopeful at this point of a reasonable solution to the problem.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, failure to repay the money would create an even bigger fiscal problem for the county, since the federal government would likely withhold grant funding from the county until the funds were repaid.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bottom line is, if we don\u2019t pay it back, or agree to pay it back within a year, they freeze all our grants in the county,\u201d said Commissioner Stan Owens. \u201cWe\u2019re looking roughly at $2.7 million in grants down the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

Owens said it was a question of paying the $365,000 or losing millions in federal grant money, noting that failure to repay the money would impact projects countywide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAVE MOSIER\/independent editor The frustration is mounting for the Van Wert County Board of Commissioners over a mandate to repay $365,000 in federal grant money for what county officials call a minor paperwork error. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is seeking repayment of a grant awarded to the county for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-31 09:28:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}