Glock gets stimulus money for guns

By KRISTI E. SWARTZ

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Symrna-based Glock received $960 in stimulus money to equip three Department of Interior Recovery Oversight officers with 9 mm handguns.

No, that does not mean the officers can draw on someone at the Department of Interior if they find federal stimulus money is misspent.

The law enforcement officers are part of the federal agency’s Office of Inspector General.

The office, which is independent of the Department of Interior, received $15 million in federal stimulus money to set up its own Recovery Oversight Office to oversee how the dollars are spent.

The office has 29 people — auditors, evaluators and investigators — 10 of which are new hires. The investigators are federal law enforcement officers and so by law, they are required to carry guns and badges, said Kris Kolesnik, a spokesman for the DOI’s inspector general.

Glock, which employs 130 people at its U.S. headquarters in Smyrna, makes semi-automatic handguns for commercial, law enforcement and federal use.

Some of the officers will work out of Washington; others will work out of Denver, Kolesnik said. Their main jobs are to prevent the mis-spending of stimulus money as well as report it, if it is discovered.

“Anytime we see there’s a potential problem with money going out the door with someone who’s not equipped to spend it wisely or contracts not being done properly, then we issue advisories,” Kolesnik said.

“When somebody’s about to do something dumb, we warn them they are about to do something dumb.”

The office then posts advisories on its Web site. So far, two are listed.

The advisories may not mean that federal stimulus dollars were mishandled. They may only report that other money or contracts weren’t used properly

For example, a July 8 advisory noted that a contract for a road to be built in California was solicited improperly.

“That doesn’t apply to Recovery money, but we indicate we are afraid that somebody in the system would use that same inappropriate vehicle for Recovery money,” Kolesnik said. “So we’re alerting them not to do that.”

The $787 billion federal stimulus package was designed to pull the nation out of a recession, but allocated money must be tied to creating or saving jobs.

In an April financial report, Glock said pistol sales increased 36 percent in fiscal 2009 and that it expected strong growth in fiscal 2010 as well.