Federal Reports

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), has awarded a series of grants to States and Tribes to combat opioid use disorder (OUD). SAMHSA was authorized to award $1 billion in funding for fiscal years (FYs) 2017 and 2018. These grants included the Tribal Opioid Response (TOR) grants. The purposes of these grants were to increase access to treatment, reduce unmet treatment needs, and reduce opioid overdose-related deaths through prevention, treatment, and recovery services for OUD.Our objective was to determine whether the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma met program goals and complied with Federal regulations in administering its TOR grant.

On September 22, 2020, President Donald J. Trump issued Executive Order 13950 (EO or the Order), “Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,” which requires federal agencies, federal grantees, federal contractors, and the Uniformed Services to address trainings that include divisive concepts, race or sex stereotyping, and race and sex scapegoating. Section 6(c)(ii) of the Order states that each agency head shall request the agency’s Inspector General to thoroughly review and assess by the end of the calendar year, and not less than annually thereafter, agency compliance with the requirements of this Order, in the form of a report submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The Chair of the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sent the request to the Inspector General on October 25, 2020. This report presents the findings of the Inspector General’s review.

In planning and performing our audit of the basic financial statements of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as of and for the year ended September 30, 2020, in accordance with auditing standards generally accepted in the United States of America and the standards applicable to financial audits contained in Government Auditing Standards, issued by the Comptroller General of the United States, we considered EEOC’s internal control over financial reporting as a basis for designing audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances for the purpose of expressing our opinion on the financial statements, but not for the purpose of expressingan opinion on the effectiveness of the EEOC’s internal control. Accordingly, we do not express an opinion on the effectiveness of EEOC’s internal control over financial reporting.

To combat money laundering in the U.S., Congress enacted a series of laws, collectively referred to as the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). The BSA required financial institutions, including money services businesses, to report suspicious activities to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Under the BSA, the Postal Service is defined as a money services business and is required to report suspicious activity involving money order sales transactions or patterns of transactions. The Postal Service must also provide BSA Anti-Money Laundering training to all employees responsible for or overseeing the sale of financial instruments such as money orders. Our objectives were to determine whether the Postal Service properly reviews and reports suspicious activity information, and to evaluate contractor compliance and Postal Service oversight of its BSA training contract.