Federal Reports

We audited WSFR grants awarded by FWS to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Marine Fisheries to ensure compliance and cost allowability.

The PACT Act significantly expanded veterans’ eligibility for disabilities that VA presumes are related to exposure to toxic substances. The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted this review to determine whether Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) staff processed PACT Act claims for presumptive disabilities in accordance with applicable laws and procedures before denying them.

This report highlights that claims processors sometimes requested unwarranted examinations, which delayed claims processing and burdened veterans, or the processors did not return examinations for clarification when there was insufficient or conflicting information. Claims processors also sometimes requested medical opinions to determine service connection for disabilities the PACT Act presumed to be connected to service. These errors resulted in unnecessary payments for examinations and medical opinions, as well as underpayments to veterans. Additional errors had the potential to affect veterans’ benefits, such as when claims processors prematurely based decisions on inadequate or inconsistent examination results before denying veterans’ claims.

The OIG team also identified errors in claims processing that, while correctly denying service connection, resulted in an estimated $1.4 million in unnecessary costs for unwarranted examinations and medical opinions in the six-month review period. Underpayments were also identified totaling about $56,700 for two veterans’ claims during the same period who were improperly denied service connection. The team also found an estimated minimum of 870 potential errors that could affect veterans’ benefits. The OIG acknowledges that VBA has taken steps to address these kinds of errors for examinations, but that work is ongoing.

VBA concurred with the OIG’s two recommendations to update the claims processing manual to clarify when examinations and medical opinions are needed and to continue to develop tools to aid claims processors in determining when they are needed and to evaluate their effectiveness.

We audited the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Office of Asset Sales’ U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)‐Held Vacant Loan Sales (HVLS) program. The audit objective was to assess the extent to which HUD tracks and measures its loan sales’ program success and its achievement of mission outcomes as they relate to the Affordable Housing Action Plan. HUD did not have adequate information to measure its loan sales’ program success as it relates to the affordable housing initiatives. HUD does not require third-party purchasers to report their identifying information, nor does it require them to report their final use of purchased properties, resulting in incomplete program outcome data. There were inconsistencies in the sales outcome reports provided by purchasers to HUD; and purchasers across HVLS sales did not provide sufficient documentation to support their reported uses of the mortgage loans and underlying properties. Postsale reporting is critical because HUD uses it to ensure that purchasers comply with the program requirements. However, because of inadequate measurement information, we were not able to determine HUD’s success rate in achieving mission objectives. With better postsale reporting, HUD can better assess whether the HVLS program outcomes are furthering HUD’s goals to promote affordable housing, expand opportunities for home ownership, and revitalize communities.