Federal Reports

What We Looked At Under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) received $25 billion to help the Nation’s public transit agencies mitigate the impacts of COVID-19. FTA obligated over $4.4 billion of this funding to recipients within FTA’s Region 9, which contains the 4th, 10th, and 11th highest FTA CARES Act fund recipients nationwide. Although the Agency expanded its oversight of COVID-19 relief funding recipients, we previously found risks associated with these activities and FTA’s oversight of contract and grant expenditures. Given our previous findings and the magnitude of taxpayer funds involved, we initiated this audit to assess FTA’s oversight of its Region 9 recipients’ compliance with CARES Act funding requirements. Specifically, we evaluated (1) FTA’s oversight processes relevant to Region 9 CARES Act payments, and (2) the eligibility of CARES Act payments for a statistical sample of eight Region 9 recipients.What We Found FTA conducts limited oversight of its Region 9 recipients' CARES Act payments. Specifically, the Agency did not amend its standard automated grant payment process to account for elevated CARES Act fund risks and relies on contractor-conducted oversight reviews that are insufficiently scoped to identify CARES Act funding noncompliance. Further, despite FTA encouraging recipients to use these funds expeditiously, FTA Region 9 funds remain unexpended. These limited oversight activities put the Agency at greater risk its CARES Act funds will be subject to fraud and misuse. For instance, we identified a total of $192.8 million in unsupported costs and $4.2 million in ineligible expenses associated with CARES Act payments for six of the eight sample Region 9 recipients tested. These issues were due in part to FTA’s limited oversight and broad eligibility guidance. Overall, we estimate FTA paid up to $340 million in unsupported costs and $106.9 million in ineligible expenses across Region 9 CARES Act recipients—totaling $446.9 million in Federal funds at risk.Our Recommendations We made four recommendations to strengthen FTA’s oversight of its recipients’ compliance with CARES Act funding requirements. The Agency concurred with recommendations 1 through 3, which we consider resolved but open pending completion of planned actions. FTA did not concur with recommendation 4, which we consider open and unresolved. 

North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Emergency Preparedness and Operations (EOP) standard 011-2, was approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on August 24, 2021, with an effective date of April 1, 2023. EOP-011-2 includes a requirement to implement and maintain a cold weather preparedness plan for generating units with 7 required elements. EOP-011-2 also includes a requirement for evidence documenting the plan was implemented and maintained as well as evidence that applicable personnel completed training on the cold weather preparedness plan. Due to the risk of weather-related generation asset outages, we performed an evaluation to determine if TVA completed cold-weather plans in accordance with NERC reliability standard for Emergency Preparedness and Operations. We determined TVA generally completed cold-weather plans in accordance with NERC reliability standard for EOP-011-2. However, we identified minor discrepancies in certification letters and training.

The Payment Integrity Information Act (PIIA) requires agencies to annually review and identify programs and activities that may be susceptible to significant improper payments, estimate the improper payment rates in agency programs, and report on their actions to reduce and recover those payments. We found that AmeriCorps implemented corrective actions that improved its compliance with PIIA reporting requirements relative to past years. For FY 2023, AmeriCorps met eight of ten PIIA compliance requirements. We made three findings relating to the two remaining requirements. We found that: (1) AmeriCorps reported an improper payment rate above the ten percent compliance threshold for one program, the Senior Companion Program (SCP); (2) AmeriCorps reported improper payment rates that were not accurate, reliable, or consistent with Office of Management and Budget guidance for AmeriCorps State and National (ASN), Foster Grandparent Program (FGP), and SCP; and (3) AmeriCorps did not publish Improper Payment and Unknown Payment Estimates for the National Service Trust (NST), which they assessed as a susceptible program. AmeriCorps concurred with the first finding and agreed to develop and implement actions to reduce improper payment rates below ten percent. AmeriCorps did not concur with our second and third findings and will not implement the related recommendations on unmatched reporting errors, payments to ineligible recipients, and publishing improper and unknown payment estimates for the NST. We will keep open the recommendations related to the three findings until AmeriCorps submits documentation to demonstrate the completion and sufficiency of the corrective actions.

The Railroad Retirement Board Complied with the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 for Fiscal Year 2023

Over the past several decades, the United States has lost ground as a leader in semiconductor chip manufacturing and research. Congress passed the CHIPS Act of 2022 to help rebuild the domestic semiconductor industry and strengthen semiconductor research and development.The CHIPS Act provides $50 billion to the Department of Commerce to support research and development, innovation, and manufacturing related to semiconductors. In addition, the CHIPS Act authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to issue up to $75 billion in direct loans and loan guarantees.The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is overseeing the Department’s CHIPS program. NIST established two offices to implement the CHIPS program: the CHIPS Program Office (CPO), responsible for implementing the semiconductor incentives program, and the CHIPS Research and Development Office (CRDO), responsible for programs undertaking research and development activities. The initial CHIPS leadership team was announced in September 2022 and undertook hiring for the two offices.The objective of our evaluation was to assess NIST’s progress in meeting workforce hiring milestones for CPO and CRDO. We found that NIST surpassed its hiring goals for CPO and CRDO but did not develop a comprehensive workforce plan to meet its human capital needs. Without a comprehensive workforce plan, CPO and CRDO lack assurance that they have adequately aligned their resources to fulfill their mission or identified current and future staffing opportunities and constraints. Workforce planning ensures that agencies have the right people with the right skills to accomplish the mission and enables agencies to meet current and future organizational goals and objectives.We made two recommendations to help NIST meet workforce needs for both the CHIPS program and future hiring efforts. NIST concurred with both recommendations.

What We Looked AtIn a typical year, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) awards over $20 billion in grants for transit system development and improvement, including the purchase of real property for bus facilities, bus rapid transit, light rail, heavy rail, and commuter rail projects. Through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, Congress authorized as much as $108.1 billion to FTA to improve public transportation systems throughout the country. Given FTA’s large investment in these transit projects, we initiated this audit. Our audit objectives were to assess FTA’s oversight of grant recipients’ (1) reporting and (2) disposal of real property funded with FTA grant assistance.What We FoundFTA cannot identify all reportable real property associated with its grants, and real property data depend primarily on recipients’ self-reporting. Additionally, FTA does not conduct real property oversight reviews of all grant recipients with reportable property. FTA also does not enforce its requirement for recipients to maintain real property inventories or verify that their inventories include all reportable Federal interest. Furthermore, FTA does not enforce a regulatory requirement for recipients to submit annual reports on real property. Lastly, FTA’s oversight of real property disposition is inadequate to ensure recipients comply with disposal requirements. One grantee disposed of 62 properties without informing FTA because the grantee was unaware of whether an FTA financial interest existed in any of the properties. FTA’s insufficient oversight of reportable real property creates a higher risk that property will be disposed of without consideration for FTA’s financial interest. Our RecommendationsWe have made eight recommendations to help FTA improve its oversight of real property reporting and improve accountability for both FTA and its grant recipients when disposing of real property no longer needed for its intended purpose. FTA concurred with all eight recommendations. We consider all recommendations resolved but open pending completion of planned actions.