SF Gets Audited by Feds
San Francisco is expected to suffer a $9.3 million budget hit in the wake of the federal audit that found the city reaped millions of dollars without justification to prosecute border-related crimes, city officials said Friday.
Federal officials released an audit last week that found that the city was not entitled to any of the millions it got over three years under the Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative grant program, which repays local authorities in border states for handling prosecutions on behalf of federal authorities.
U.S. Justice Department auditors said there was no evidence federal prosecutors had referred any criminal cases to San Francisco and that the city had simply estimated how much it deserved.
The city repaid $2.7 million in February after federal prosecutors threatened to sue the city for the $5.4 million in grant money the city owed the government. That sum the city owed later increased to $5.7 million, and on Friday, Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda said the city probably would lose another $3.6 million in grants it was counting on this year, bringing the total hit to $9.3 million.