The mission couldn't sound more popularly appealing: a taxpayer-funded jobs program to help get the unemployed back on their feet. Various nonprofit groups step forward to help lead the way, and local governments pay generously to outsource employment programs to ease bureaucratic burdens. Therein lies the problem: Once it's outsourced, oversight too often goes out with it.

As the Post-Dispatch's Kelsey Landis reports, one such St. Louis County nonprofit, Family and Workforce Centers of America, veered from the rules. An audit found evidence of fraud and mismanagement. But the audit came only after three years of questionable work by the nonprofit, which is far too late for government oversight to kick in when millions of dollars are at play.

When St. Louis County taxpayers wonder how their government could wind up with a $40 million budget hole, it's lax auditing that helps explain why so much money just seems to disappear. The amounts might seem small when examined individually, but when there are hundreds of such leaks in government, that's how small budget holes develop into giant ones.

And it's not just the county. Back in 2019, an audit of the St. Louis city Agency on Training and Employment uncovered lax accounting practices that allowed certain individuals to claim billable hours for time spent working when they clearly weren't. One of those individuals was Bruce Franks, the Black Lives Matter protester-turned-lawmaker. He was caught billing for hours worked at a time when videos showed him protesting at the mall in Brentwood. An audit by then-State Auditor Nicole Galloway alleged misspending of grant money by the agency, poor oversight over payroll and a hostile work environment.

In the case of the Family and Workforce Centers of America, it appears to be a simple case of incompetent management and bookkeeping. But what turned it into a potential fraud case was the nonprofit's efforts to cover up its mistakes. It wasn't the county government but rather the state Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development that uncovered the wrongdoing — and that occurred only because a whistleblower came forward. The nonprofit denies allegations that it paid employees who didn't do actual work or didn't exist.

County employees did try to provide checks on the nonprofit's activities. They raised red flags when eight out of 10 phone numbers listed in records for program beneficiaries couldn't be verified as valid. Staffers at the nonprofit were combative when confronted with record-keeping errors. Beneficiaries were receiving checks long after leaving the program.

The opportunities for waste, fraud and personal enrichment are vast when government agencies choose to hand over key responsibilities to private services that claim to be doing righteous work. It's great to put a high premium on trust, but taxpayers must demand placing an even higher premium on rigorous oversight.

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