Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm dropped nearly $125,000 in taxpayer money on pricey hotels and other expenses during her electric vehicle-boosting summer 2023 road trip — flanked by a gas-guzzling car — while her staff improperly exceeded their daily, federally determined allowances, according to the department’s watchdog.
Granholm’s team submitted 42 travel vouchers worth $124,824 for the taxpayer-funded tour — but 36 of the them had lodging costs valued over the government’s per diem rates to the tune of $9,487.50, the watchdog found.
Some of the travelers also received higher reimbursement amounts than they were supposed to and several travel reports had inaccurate information in them, prompting House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) to seize on the report as proof of “serious waste, fraud, and abuse.”
The inflated costs were also a direct result of the Energy Department’s chosen method of travel. There had been cheaper hotels usually within a mile or so, but Granholm’s group decided to book rooms near EV charging stations.
“Travelers could have chosen different nearby hotels to reduce travel costs at the Government’s expense; however, Department officials mentioned difficulties finding hotels with functioning EV chargers on site or nearby,” the watchdog’s report noted.
The difficulty finding the charging stations is a result of what one Democratic senator called the Biden administration’s “pathetic” progress on a $5 billion program to expand EV charging depots nationwide beginning in 2021.
As of the start of 2024, only seven had been built.
“That is pathetic. We’re now three years into this … That is a vast administrative failure,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said last June. “Something is terribly wrong and it needs to be fixed.”
Notably, Granholm also decided against using a Tesla, which had a larger network of chargers available at the time of her trip.
The four-day EV jaunt used a Ford Mustang Mach-E, assembled in Mexico, and was intended to gin up public excitement for doing away with fossil fuel-driven travel.
Ultimately the ordeal gave Granholm political headaches after police were called in response to her staff using a gas-powered vehicle to hog a charging station for the secretary’s use, triggering scathing headlines.
The watchdog additionally pointed to three travel vouchers that lacked expense details in their original authorization and four that had exceeded the authorized amount by at least 15%.
“Some examples of travel expenses that were missing from the travel authorizations included: an airline flight, three rental car expenses, an expense for an additional night of lodging, and parking fees,” the report explained.
Granholm’s team also got knocked for not using government-issued travel cards for expenses in four of the travel vouchers, accounting for about $2,553 of the costs — depriving the department of potential benefits from those expenditures.
At least two travelers on the secretary’s team claimed that they had inadvertently forgotten to bring their government-issued travel cards on the trek.
However, while some of the expenses went over per diem rates, they did not exceed” the government’s “maximum allowable actual expense limitation,” per the watchdog.
“Flexibility is paramount when organizing and executing travel to support any Cabinet official, and even with the most dynamic domestic trip undertaken by Secretary Granholm the [watchdog] did not find any areas of significant financial impacts or noncompliance with travel rules,” a spokesperson for the Energy Department told The Post.
Comer had requested the Energy Department’s Office of the Inspector General probe the matter and suss out the costs of the journey in a report that was publicly released Wednesday.
“Today’s OIG report is further evidence of the Biden Administration failing to protect taxpayer dollars and leaving funds exposed to serious waste, fraud, and abuse,” Comer said in a statement.
“Secretary Granholm embarked on a taxpayer-funded EV summer road trip to showcase its radical Green New Deal priorities,” he added. “This publicity stunt not only illustrates how out of touch the Biden Administration is with the consequences of its policies but came at the expense of American taxpayers.
Police respond
The outgoing energy secretary’s trip went from Charlotte, NC to Memphis, Tenn. and was part of a caravan of electric and non-electric vehicles.
While traveling in a suburb of Augusta, Ga., Granholm’s team realized there weren’t going to be enough energy chargers for her to use and opted to park a gas-powered vehicle there to save a spot for her.
But that boxed out a family with a baby in their EV on a scorching day, prompting them to call the police, which ultimately declined to take action against Granholm’s staffers.
The incident got national attention after an NPR reporter who tagged along with the energy secretary on the trip, broke the story. Granholm, who has faced intense congressional scrutiny over the debacle, has since fessed up to poor judgment.
Other abuses of taxpayer dollars
Aside from the infamous road trip, the Energy Department’s Office of the Inspector General found that similar transgressions plagued other department trips.
This includes instances of travelers getting over-reimbursed for their trips, filing vouchers with inaccurate information regarding locations and dates, and neglecting to include cost comparisons.
“We identified 15 instances associated with 9 travel vouchers for which travelers exceeded the allowable tip amount of up to 15 [%] of the trip fare,” the report said.
“The issues we identified occurred because of inadequate reviews of travel vouchers and insufficient knowledge of Federal travel requirements.”
The department’s total travel costs in fiscal year 2023 were $58.8 million, but the report did not specify how much money had been overspent during the other problematic trip expenses it identified.
To prevent repeat issues in the future, the watchdog is recommending that the department’s chief of staff significantly step up reviews of “travel authorizations and vouchers for accuracy” and that refresher training on the government’s travel rules be provided.
