Federal Reports

This Office of Inspector General (OIG) Healthcare Facility Inspection program report describes the results of a focused evaluation of the care provided at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System in Minnesota. 

This evaluation focused on five key content domains:
     •    Culture
     •    Environment of care
     •    Patient safety
     •    Primary care
     •    Veteran-centered safety net

The OIG issued three recommendations for VA to correct identified deficiencies in one domain:
   1.    Environment of care
     •    Feminine hygiene products
     •    Secure medications
     •    Equipment inspection dates

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.