PennFuture Returns State Grant, After Corbett Staffers Uncover Contract Violations

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

December 21, 2011 | 3:05 PM

Pennsylvania’s leading environmental advocacy group, PennFuture, had to return a $138,000 state grant, after violating the contract it agreed to with the Department of Community and Economic Development.
Don Gilliland of the Patriot-News broke the story:

Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future — better known as PennFuture — received a two-year grant from the Department of Community and Economic Development in 2009 to provide information on energy conservation to school districts and municipalities.
PennFuture hired a consultant to do the work without getting approval from DCED as required in the contract.
More troubling is the fact that after the consultant was terminated one year into the contract, the remaining grant funds were “repurposed” without notice to DCED or an amendment to the contract.
The remaining funds were used for other PennFuture energy-conservation efforts, including a daylong program on energy efficiency at the group’s annual conference last year.
PennFuture President and CEO Jan Jarrett takes full responsibility.

Two members of the Corbett Administration – Energy Executive Patrick Henderson and speechwriter Dennis Roddy – discovered PennFuture’s “repurposing,” and forwarded their findings to DCED Secretary Alan Walker. Jarrett has apologized, telling the Patriot-News, “We have lots going on. It slipped through the cracks.”