ECO Group Spent $25K of Your Money On Their Christmas Party - Granite Grok

ECO Group Spent $25K of Your Money On Their Christmas Party

Tax Money down the toilet for DoD green energy awardsA recent audit of funds dispersed by the Federal government’s  National Science Foundation revealed, wait for it…waste, fraud, and abuse.

The audit, conducted by the National Science Foundation inspector general and the Defense Contract Audit Agency, detailed spending by the Colorado-based National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). The nonprofit, designed to operate a network of ecological observatories across the continent, is solely funded by the National Science Foundation.

They spent $25,000.00 taxpayer dollars for a Christmas party and $11,000.00 for premium coffee services. This is an environmental group entirely funded by taxpayer dollars, and are they.  Their budget in 2007 was $5.6 million.  By 2012 it had risen to 63.7 Million.  (An 11x + increase)

Here are the grant figures by years from their Form 990’s…

2008 $14.887 million.

2009 $22.07 Million

2010 $28.2 Million

2011 39.8 Million

2012 63.7 Million.

2013..unknown but probably close to 75 Million by now if I had to guess, maybe more.

No wonder they felt like they could splurge a bit.

And how about pay for the top 8 key organization leaders?  Yes, you guessed it.  It is slightly above the national average of those paying their salaries.

In 2012 the top 8 received 1.6 million in combined salary with total compensation of just under 2 million.  Insurance (probably no ObamaCare), retirement plans, you know…the usual stuff.

Average income for these non-profit workers was over $200K each per year, more than enough to pay for their own coffee, trips, and gala’s.

If I recall correctly, Jeanne Shaheen is a BIG supporter of funding for the NSF.  Maybe we should all call her and ask how the National Ecological Observatory Network research into wasting taxpayer dollars is going.

While you’ve got her on th phone, see if she has an opinion about the money this group has spent annually lobbying congress to increase their budget.  In 2012 they spent $96,000.00 of your money to convince congress to give them more of your money.

And Congress continues to hand it over.

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