Federal Reports

Our Objective(s)
To assess the status of the Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) unexpended Hurricane Sandy funds.

Why This Audit
In January 2013, FTA received $10.9 billion for the widespread damage Hurricane Sandy caused to transportation infrastructure when it hit the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States. FTA retained approximately $10 billion of these funds to obligate to grant recipients for Hurricane Sandy related recovery, relief, and resiliency programs. Yet, as of March 2024, approximately $3.8 billion (38 percent) remained unspent. Additionally, our Agency's prior work identified concerns with FTA's tracking and oversight of its Hurricane Sandy funds, including issues with timely recipient spending of the funds.

What We Found
Most of FTA's grants with unexpended Hurricane Sandy funds have prolonged project activity.
Twenty-eight grants in our audit universe have ongoing project activities with completion milestones from April 2025 to July 2030.
FTA heavily relies on recipients' self-reporting to obtain the status of and activity associated with their unexpended Hurricane Sandy funds.
We identified 14 grants for which recipients expended a total of approximately $95.4 million for costs incurred after the grants' periods of performance ended. This $95.4 million represent questioned costs.
FTA's oversight was not sufficient to encourage expedited spending of Hurricane Sandy funds or to reduce the risks of ineligible costs.

FTA's Hurricane Sandy grants with unexpended funds are not closed despite recipients completing all project activity.
We identified six FTA Hurricane Sandy grants, representing $96.9 million in unexpended funds, that remain open despite recipients completing all project activities anywhere from approximately 1 to 8 years ago.
The recipients extended project milestones without requesting extensions to the grants' performance periods to align with project activity updates.
Without an updated grant performance period that aligns with project completion milestones, FTA lacks a reliable benchmark to assess the timeliness of grant closeout.
Further, FTA has no guidance or timeframes for its recipients to carry out the steps needed between completing project activity and beginning the grant closeout process. As a result, the process for grant closeout and deobligation of unexpended funds may be inefficient.

Recommendations
We made 4 recommendations to improve FTA's management of unexpended Hurricane Sandy funds.

This document discusses EAC OIG's planned oversight activities for fiscal year 2026.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviewed aspects of community care utilization at the VA Boston Healthcare System for fiscal year 2024. The system, part of Veterans Integrated Service Network 1, includes three VA medical centers and several outpatient clinics. VA direct care (provided at VA facilities) and VA community care (delivered by providers in the community paid by VA) were compared.

The patient population consists of 58,324 patients who received medical care at the system or through community care paid for by the system. Nearly all received primary and mental health care through VA direct care. About 97 percent of patients received specialty care services exclusively through VA direct care. Inpatient community care accounted for 12 percent of acute care bed-days. Most community care referrals were requested due to drive times.

The OIG assessed referral processes, appointment timeliness, and use of disqualified providers for community care services. About 83 percent of direct and 84 percent of community care referrals were activated within two days. Appointment setting met timeliness standards in 55 percent of direct and 53 percent of community care referrals. Over 90 percent of referrals were completed within 90 days of the requested date. However, some referrals lacked documentation of scheduled appointments.

The OIG found no community care referrals for primary care and less than 3 percent for mental health care. About 66 percent of mental health and 61 percent of specialty care community appointments met timeliness standards. No disqualified providers were found. 

In response to three recommendations, the System Director concurred with two recommendations and described enhancing reports of metrics for scheduling, completed appointments, wait times, and facility access and identifying opportunities to improve and refine practices. The System Director concurred in principle with one recommendation and committed to educating staff on consult documentation practices.

In keeping with its responsibilities under the Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended, the OIG monitored the audit of TVA's fiscal year 2025 financial statements performed by Ernst and Young LLP (EY) to assure their work complied with Government Auditing Standards. Our review of EY's work disclosed no instance in which the firm did not comply in all material respects with Government Auditing Standards.