Montgomery County awarded more than $600,000 in no-bid payments to nine companies that had ties to county police officers and were part of a controversial tuition-assistance program, Montgomery's inspector general said in a report released Monday.
The government provided little oversight for the program and in many cases appeared to have responded to invoices from the companies simply by cutting checks of as much as $59,800, according to the report. The lack of controls enabled 216 county employees -- police officers, sheriff's deputies and corrections officers -- to take county-funded training classes and, at the end of the courses, purchase deeply discounted guns that one official has called the "candy" to get them to enroll in the first place.
Inspector General Thomas J. Dagley concluded that the close ties among the companies, employees and students enrolled in the classes have "and will continue to expose county taxpayer dollars to waste and abuse until more comprehensive guidelines and monitoring are put in place."
Problems in the tuition program were discovered in July by Sheriff Raymond M. Kight. Two deputies reported that they had attended a two-day firearms training class whose best feature was the deal they could get on a handgun -- $99 for a Glock valued at several times that, Kight said. For fiscal 2009, the county budgeted $775,350 but spent more than $1 million, the report said.
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