Federal Reports

At the request of the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Supply Chain, we examined the cost proposal submitted by a company for transmission construction services. Our examination objective was to determine if the cost proposal was fairly stated for a planned 5-year, $25 million contract.In our opinion, the company's cost proposal was overstated. We found the proposed labor markup rates, for recovery of indirect costs, were overstated compared to recent actual costs. We estimated TVA could avoid about $783,000 over the planned $25 million contract by negotiating revised labor markup rates to more accurately reflect the company's recent actual costs. (Summary Only)

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This report recaps OIG achievements in 2021, in core mission as well as organizational improvements.

The Office of the Inspector General included an audit of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) maintenance of its owned gas pipelines in our annual audit plan due to pipeline issues identified at other utilities and potential risks to TVA. Our audit objective was to determine if TVA’s maintenance of its owned gas pipelines is adequate. We found TVA did not provide sufficient oversight of the two Contract Operations Providers and the Contract Engineering Provider. We found the lack of oversight resulted in inadequate maintenance in some areas and inconsistencies in reporting that hindered TVA’s ability to track and correct the identified deficiencies. In addition, we found TVA’s Gas Transmission Pipelines Policy (TVA Power Operations Standard Programs and Processes 09.120, Natural Gas Transmission Pipeline Operations) in place between July 2016 and October 2020 was limited and outdated on contractor oversight.

We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) oversight of its public housing agencies’ (PHA) reasonable accommodation policies and procedures. We initiated this audit because we identified an increase in housing discrimination complaints based on a failure to provide a reasonable accommodation, even as the total number of all housing discrimination complaints was decreasing. Our audit objective was to determine whether HUD had adequate policies and procedures for ensuring that PHAs properly addressed, assessed, and fulfilled requests for reasonable accommodation, including COVID-19 related requests. HUD did not have adequate policies and procedures for ensuring that PHAs properly addressed, assessed, and fulfilled requests for reasonable accommodation. HUD also did not perform civil rights front-end reviews as required. These conditions occurred because HUD (1) did not include in its compliance monitoring guidance a requirement for personnel to review PHAs reasonable accommodation policies and procedures, (2) had not updated its guidance to ensure that it was centralized, and (3) did not believe it was responsible for conducting civil rights front-end reviews. As a result, PHAs did not receive consistent oversight in this area nationwide and may not be properly implementing existing requirements or not understand all their responsibilities related to requests for reasonable accommodation. Also, HUD’s Office of Public and Indian Housing (PIH) did not have the benefit of the information the reviews would have collected and HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) could not use the information to address issues that may have been identified or to pursue any corrective action. We recommend that HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Housing and Voucher Programs (1) update its compliance monitoring guidance to include a requirement for personnel to review PHAs reasonable accommodations policies and procedures (2) update and consolidate its reasonable accommodation policies and procedures to ensure that there is centralized guidance available for the field offices and PHAs; (3) conduct additional outreach efforts to educate tenants and PHAs on their rights and responsibilities related to requests for reasonable accommodation; (4) require that PHAs track requests for reasonable accommodation, including the date of the request, the type of request, and the disposition and date of any action taken that should be made available to HUD at its request; (5) review the joint agreement with HUD FHEO, and related Section 504 checklist, and modify, update, or recommit to it to ensure that the roles and responsibilities of the Office of Public and Indian Housing for conducting civil rights front-end reviews is clearly defined; and (6) ensure that personnel receive training on how to conduct the civil rights front-end reviews, including a review of PHAs reasonable accommodation policies and procedures.