(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Justice Department gave a group called the New York Agency for Community Affairs a grant of $135,130 in fiscal year 2005 to “provide youth leadership training to students at select New York City schools, form ‘ACORN Youth Union’ chapters, and coordinate student campaigns to address issues such as school funding, neighborhood safety, and school governance,” according to a Government Accountability Office report released this week.

The GAO report says that in fiscal years 2005 through 2009 the federal government gave ACORN and what the GAO calls “potentially related organizations” more than $40 million in federal funds.

According to the report, eight other agencies joined the Justice Department in providing federal funding to ACORN and “potentially related organizations.” These included the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Treasury Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), NeighborWorks, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)...