Federal Reports

On August 20, 2020, in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) created the Pandemic Relief Credit (PRC) to provide a measure of relief to local power companies (LPCs), industries, businesses, and people of TVA’s seven state service region. Relief was provided in the form of a 2.5 percent credit to LPC and directly served customers’ demand and nonfuel energy charges. In August 2021, TVA extended the 2.5 percent credit through fiscal year (FY) 2022. TVA subsequently extended the 2.5 percent credit through FY 2023. Through July 2023, TVA had issued about $630 million in PRCs.We included this audit in our annual audit plan due to the amount of credits issued to LPCs and issues identified in a previous audit of pandemic-era credits. Our audit objective was to determine if adequate controls were in place to ensure the PRCs were calculated and utilized in accordance with TVA Board of Directors’ (TVA Board) approval. Our audit scope was the $449,227,369 of credits issued under the PRC for the period October 2020 through September 2022.We determined some controls were adequate to ensure PRCs were calculated and utilized in accordance with TVA Board approval. Specifically, controls were adequate to ensure (1) PRCs were calculated accurately and (2) LPCs that elected to pass the standard service portion of the credit to their customers did so in a nondiscriminatory manner. However, we determined the control in place to ensure the Time of Use (TOU) portion of the credit that was passed to LPC customers was inadequate. Specifically, the control for testing whether the LPC was passing the credit to the TOU customers was to ask LPC personnel if the credit was passed on to the customers. Due to the inadequacy of the control, TVA was not aware that one of the 25 LPCs we tested had not passed the majority of the credits to their end-use TOU customers totaling about $420,000. In addition, since the standard service portion of the credit did not have to be passed on to LPC customers, the cash positions of LPCs could be increased by the PRC. We determined 44 LPCs had surplus cash in excess of the TVA Board’s previously established 33 percent cash ratio threshold and noted 36 of these had not passed the standard service portion of the credit on to their end-use customers.

The EPA’s P2 grant results aligned with program goals, but without a supervisory verification process, the program may report inaccurate grant results to the public.

We reviewed the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Wildlife Services’ investigations of livestock deaths by Mexican gray wolves.

NASA’s Artemis campaign involves multiple programs and projects, more than a dozen major prime contractors, and thousands of suppliers. When supply chain disruptions happen, it can put the entire effort at risk of significant delays and increased costs. Part of the problem, we found, is that NASA lacks full visibility into the Artemis campaign’s suppliers.

In July 1973, a fire damaged or destroyed up to 18 million Army and Air Force official military personnel files at the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis, Missouri. This disaster makes it difficult for affected veterans—those who served in the Army or Air Force prior to 1960 or 1964, respectively—to obtain required records when filing claims for benefits. If a veteran’s records cannot be located because they were destroyed in the fire, a veterans service representative requests reconstruction of medical treatment records, military service records, or both, depending on the veteran’s needs. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2023 requires the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) to report on the extent to which Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) personnel follow the Adjudication Procedures Manual when assisting veterans with obtaining or reconstructing service records and medical information that were damaged or destroyed during the fire. The OIG therefore conducted this audit to assess VBA’s assistance to these veterans with obtaining damaged or destroyed records. The OIG found that VBA staff did not always follow procedures in a timely manner or in the order outlined in the Adjudication Procedures Manual and did not always complete required follow up procedures. The OIG made three recommendations: to establish a process to identify and track veterans’ records that have been determined to be fire damaged or destroyed, to train VBA staff on the process for requesting service treatment and military service records for fire related records and provide more specific guidance on information required for the NPRC to locate veterans’ records, and to ensure VBA staff follow steps as outlined in the manual for when to send required forms and conduct follow-up.