FEMA Director Spent $151K of Taxpayers' Money on Personal Trips

The inspector general’s office at the Homeland Security Department is not talking. But its just-completed report on the unauthorized travel expenses claimed by Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Brock Long was unveiled on Tuesday by a Democratic lawmaker. Long’s regularly escorted, mostly weekend trips in government vehicles to his home in Hickory, N.C., amount to $151,000, said the heavily redacted 21-page report released by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. That’s $94,000 in salaries, $55,000 in travel, and $2,000 in operations and maintenance costs, according to the report. (Cummings staff had requested it from the IG as “a releasable copy.”) In the timeframe reviewed from November to May 2018, Long took at least nine official trips that either began or ended in Charlotte, N.C., or had a two-day stopover at that location, resulting in an additional 15 trips by the FEMA Office of Administrator Emergency Transport Team.