Dan Tangherlini. Photo by sbma44

Last week, the Washington Post reported that the D.C. Office of Risk Management failed to pay out some $3–6 million taken out of disabled workers’ paychecks to insurance providers over a period of about 7 years. The error was brought to light after a worker followed up on an insurance claim. Apparently, no claims made by any of the hundreds of workers who were charged for insurance but not granted policies were denied — a discrepancy that seems difficult to square with the facts of the case.

The story gets more complicated today. The Washington Examiner has it that the Fenty administration took $10 million from the workers’ compensation purse to balance the fiscal 2009 budget. According to the report, then–City Administrator Dan Tangherlini — who is now Assistant Secretary of the Treasury — “assumed that insurance claims were falling and that the city was safe in raiding the fund.”

The Examiner reports: “Authorities have not found any evidence of corruption.” What do you bet that City Council chairman Vincent Gray finds a way to spin this scandal in the worst possible light — especially since Fenty praised Tangherlini’s work back in March 2008?