The City of Warren refused to release the fiscal monitoring report conducted by the state Department of Community and Economic Development on the $500,000 anchor building grant allocated to GRO-Warren for the Allegheny Center for the Arts project.
DCED won't either.
In a letter dated July 17, and in response to a Right to Know request submitted by the Times Observer on June 13, DCED agreed to release portions of the original grant application, but declined to release anything else.
"We did not provide any records which consist of investigative notes, correspondence, complaints, working papers, investigative materials, confidential sources, and internal reports related to the requested grant, as this grant is the subject of a Department investigation," the letter said. "This information is exempt from disclosure...which protects from release records of an agency relating to a noncriminal investigation."
Jennifer Fogarty, DCED open records officer, confirmed via email on Wednesday that the fiscal monitoring report is exempt from disclosure due to an ongoing investigation.
On June 20, DCED responded to the original request with a letter indicating that the department would need an additional 30 days to respond because, "Compliance with your request may require the redaction of certain information that is not subject to access under RTKL (Right to Know Law)."
DCED originally requested an audit in December and asked the city to hire a certified public accountant to conduct a review of the grant.
Emphasizing in a letter to the city in November that "significant ambiguities exist" in the handling of the grant, DCED initiated the review which was completed in February. The report from that review was released to the city on May 14, according to documentation submitted to DCED by the city in response to the review.