At least a half-million dollars in coronavirus grants went out the door in Wisconsin without any proof that the money was needed.
A new audit blames Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services for mismanaging COVID grants and the state’s ventilator program. About a third of the grants the auditors reviewed didn’t have any documentation ‘to support their applicants or the amounts requested.’ Auditors also found that DHS didn’t track many of the 15 hundred ventilators the state bought for 39 million-dollars during the early days of the outbreak. Six of those ventilators are missing. DHS boss Kirsten Johnson says the agency had to make decisions during the ‘highly unusual circumstances of the public health emergency.’
