Energy secretary exceeded gas budget on EV road trip
Topline: Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm’s road trip to promote electric vehicles may have had the opposite effect. She and her staff racked up unauthorized expenses for gasoline, hotels and more while shilling for President Joe Biden’s clean energy legislation, according to a Jan. 3 report from the Department of Energy’s inspector general.
Key facts: The June 2023 trip was part of the DOE’s “People Powered: Summer Road Trip Brought to You by President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda.”
Government employees are reimbursed for travel expenses at a set per diem rate, but 36 of the 42 travel vouchers DOE staff submitted exceeded the rate. The 42 vouchers cost $124,823.94.
For example, one employee was reimbursed $339 for a single night’s stay in Atlanta, even though the per diem rate was set at $163.
Staffers “could have chosen different nearby hotels to reduce travel costs” but stayed in more expensive hotels that had EV chargers nearby, according to the audit.
Seven of the vouchers had expenses that required special permission, but nobody authorized them, the audit found. These included gasoline, an airline flight and Lyft rides.
Employees are required to use government-issued travel cards for all expenses so they can be properly tracked, but two staffers “unintentionally left their travel cards at home,” auditors found. The two employees spent $2,552.53.
Employees also must submit “cost comparisons” to show that an intended travel route is cheaper than alternate routes. The comparison for Granholm’s trip was never submitted, and “one traveler stated that they did not even know what a cost comparison was or what that entailed,” according to the audit.
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Background: Granholm earned $203,500 in 2023, according to records obtained by OpenTheBooks.com. Her department spent $58.8 million on travel in 2023, according to the inspector general.
Granholm’s road trip crossed through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. She went out of her way to stop in Republican districts that opposed Biden’s clean energy agenda and gave presentations promoting the Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and more, according to Good Morning America.
In Augusta, Georgia, Granholm’s staff parked a gas-powered car in front of an EV charger to reserve the space for Granholm. That left a family with a baby in their EV unable to use the charger. They called the police but never pressed charges.
Critical quote: “Department personnel, including those traveling with the Secretary, have a duty to be conscientious stewards of taxpayer funds,” the inspector general wrote. “Conscientious stewardship is particularly crucial for matters involving high publicity.”
Summary: Granholm declared during her trip that there would be an EV charger “every 50 miles” in America by February 2025. Had the government met its goal, perhaps Granholm would need less gasoline for her next trip.
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