Columns 2007

They did Ted Stevens wrong

The news coming out of Fairbanks concerning misspent federal grant money got me thinking about my days writing grants for the North Slope Borough Health Department back in the seventies.  I was new to the business of grants and had to learn on the job what did or didn’t impress the feds.  I also had to understand that their learning curve about Alaska was nothing short of mind-boggling in its slow, painful progress.

Each year I would write renewal grants to Indian Health Service for a variety of programs serving our eight North Slope villages.  Each year I would submit a budget that detailed how the money would be spent.  Each year some fun bureaucrat back in DC would respond to my proposal by asking me why I was flying everywhere as opposed to taking a train or bus or just plain driving myself. And each year I would send them a large map of the North Slope pointing out the lack of roads or train tracks. 

It eventually just became a running joke in the office.  Which OMB reviewer would this year request we cut our travel funds by using a more economical means of transportation to our villages? And just how big could we blow up the map before someone in DC got seriously insulted by our obvious disrespect for their knowledge of the area for which they approved grant funds? And just how slow is molasses? I left the department after eight years of grant writing and still did not have the answer to any of these questions.

In reading about the charges being leveled at Jim and Chris Hayes for misuse of federal grant money, I couldn’t help but notice that the feds apparently required a detailed budget to get the funds but required nothing more than a statement that the funds had been spent for follow up reporting.  No one apparently required that the grantees show they actually spent the money for the purpose stated in the budget.

I don’t know about you, but I want me some of that federal grant money.  The kind where I can merely report back that I spent it and the feds take one look at my kind and honest face and accept my report with no further details needed.  Unfortunately, the only federal grants I’ve ever been let in on had lots and lots and lots of reporting requirements, many of which centered around proving that I’d actually spent the money the way I said I would.  Now I’m starting to feel somewhat discriminated against in that no one ever told me about this other pot of money.  With the money I got, I had to send grocery price lists in to back up receipts for a five dollar apple in Nuiqsut.

But mostly at this point what I feel is a sadness for Ted Stevens.  He’s had a rough few years of late. His son’s tortured ethics have caused him no end of embarrassment. His “pipes are the Internet” explanation gave so many comedians so much fodder.  Add to that his reputation as a pork barrel senator (which outside of Alaska is not considered a good thing), and his wife’s troubles flying around this great country because some idiot in airline security thinks she’s a middle aged rocker who used to be called Cat Stevens, and any decent human being would want someone to cut this poor man a break.

Instead, he earmarks money to an organization run by a minister and friend who swears he will work with troubled youth – how much safer and more humane a cause could there be – and it blows up in his face.

I am probably not Ted Stevens biggest fan.  I don’t agree with him a lot of the time.  But I have never questioned his ultimate loyalty to this state or his real desire to do what he feels is best for Alaska and Alaskans.  He deserves better than what these supposed friends have done to him.

I guess finding real friends is hard when you wield power.  You never know if they want you for your friendship or for what proximity to you will bring in benefits to them.  In this case, it’s pretty clear that Ted Stevens seriously misjudged the purported friendship offered to him by the Hayes.

As I said before, I may not be Ted Stevens’ biggest supporter but I still think he deserves better than what these two people did to him.  In this case, his heart was in the right place but his trust was seemingly not. How sad for him.  How much sadder for them.