A popular grant program in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, is funded by gambling revenue from a local casino. With support from the Fund, reporters at Penn Live spent 19 months analyzing thousands of records, interviewing dozens of officials and grantees and building databases to understand who was requesting the money and where it was going. They found that, while the law requires the money to be used for grants that benefit the public, millions of dollars have been used to prop up for-profit businesses – including businesses connected to county officials or their networks. For example, a $40,000 grant was given to a public official to purchase a luxury truck, and a $5,500 grant went to a barber shop owned by a county commissioner’s brother. Meanwhile, requests from municipalities and nonprofits are often under-funded or rejected, even for essential services like food pantries and firefighting equipment. The county commissioners were scheduled to vote on this year’s grants the week before PennLive published the investigation, but the commissioners tabled the vote after receiving questions from reporters about the program. A day after the investigation ran, the commissioners promised to significantly reform the program. And the county official who oversaw the administration of the grant program submitted his retirement notice hours after a PennLive reporter attempted to ask him questions about the program.
Pennsylvania county freezes gambling-revenue program and launches reforms after grantee investigation raises flags
