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The Federal Emergency Management Agency improperly awarded a $450,000 grant for fire safety and prevention to a New Orleans affiliate of Acorn, the embattled community organizing group, according to an investigation by the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security.

The results of the investigation, which have yet to be released, are being provided on Tuesday to Congress, including Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the senior Republican on the Committee of Homeland Security and Government Affairs, and Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, who will be chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the next Congress.

The money provided to the Acorn Institute in New Orleans during the Bush administration in 2007 was part of a nationwide fire prevention and safety program under which the emergency management agency has awarded more than $239 million since 2003. The inspector general’s report found that the program lacked sufficient oversight and controls to ensure that grant recipients were qualified to receive the funds or that the money was properly spent.

A big chunk of the money awarded to the Acorn Institute through the fire safety program cannot be accounted for, according to the inspector general’s report. Acorn has mostly dissolved amid bankruptcy and mismanagement; its officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

As he prepares to take over as head of the chief investigative committee in the House,  Mr. Issa has said that he wants to broaden the authority of dozens of agency inspectors general, including expanded subpoena powers.

The investigation into the fire safety grants is emblematic of the type of inquiry that Mr. Issa has said can yield substantial savings for the federal government by preventing fraud and waste.

The inquiry into Acorn may highlight Mr. Issa’s goals in other ways, too – it highlights wasteful spending while also focusing on a group that has long been criticized by Republicans as being part of the Democratic machinery, including allegations of voter fraud and interference in elections. At the same time, it raises questions about the operations of the emergency management agency under the control of a Republican White House.

Last year, the House and Senate voted separately to cut off funding for Acorn through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Census Bureau barred the group from working on the 2010 census.

“Our audit of this grant concluded that the Acorn Institute should not have received these funds, did not fully implement and evaluate the program as approved, and could not substantiate all of its grant expenditures,” the investigators wrote. “The Federal Emergency Management Agency did not have sufficient oversight processes to prevent the award or to fully evaluate the use of the grant money.”

To qualify for the fire safety grant, the Acorn Institute claimed to have experience through a program called the Urban Fire Initiative, in which it said it helped remove hazardous debris from more than 3,000 homes damaged in Hurricane Katrina, and also worked with local fire officials in North Carolina and California.

The investigators found that the Urban Fire Initiative did not exist until Acorn officials created it to apply for the grant.

“It is really unthinkable that anyone would use the guise of public safety and helping victims of a tragedy like Hurricane Katrina as a calculating way to inappropriately obtain taxpayer dollars,” Mr. Issa said. “As the discussion over how to rein in government’s growth and spending moves forward, there couldn’t be a more important time to ensure that the grants awarded with taxpayer dollars meet rigorous criteria and are subject to vigilant oversight to ensure that grant recipients are not given access to taxpayer dollars under false pretenses.”

The inspector general’s report found that a Technical Evaluation Panel advised against awarding the grant to the Acorn Institute, but that agency officials then answering to the Bush White House ignored that guidance.

According to the inspector general’s report, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency have agreed to tighten oversight of the grant program.

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