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Jones paid $940 to the state for 2.5 years of personal calls he made on his state cellphone. The media looked into and asked about his expenses and exposed the extraneous spending.
The payback was almost half of the total $2,227 billed to Jones' cellphone since he started the job. Later, reports about expensive meals and new office furniture were billed to Jones' expense account at a time of severe state budget cuts.
The Department of Education requires its employees to reimburse the state monthly for anything more than the occasional, short personal call.
"He knew about the policy, and he just hadn't done it," said department spokesman Mark Stevens. "It was an oversight."
Since the award, an additional 4,000 Denver homes have been foreclosed. The city says it is working on contracts with nonprofit groups for the program's execution and hopes to start spending money on homes in October or in November. Notice of the grants first hit the Federal Register on October 6, 2008, but officials say Denver did not get a formal contract from the Housing and Urban Development department (HUD) until March 2008.
Aurora won $4.5 million from the first round of the same program and so far has spent $2.6 million buying and repairing 21 homes.
The $6 billion NSP was intended for the American communities hit hardest by the recession. Experts say there are similar problems in other cities are caused by a dense bureaucracy.
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