Federal Reports

Under the Commercial Crew Program, SpaceX and Boeing were selected to develop U.S.-based crew transportation capabilities that would be certified by NASA to meet human-rating requirements and begin routine flights to the International Space Station. The SpaceX Crew Dragon received its certification in 2020 and has flown 12 crewed missions to and from the Station since that time. The Boeing Starliner, however, is uncertified as its three flight tests have uncovered a significant number of unexpected issues with varying levels of mission risk that remain.

Why We Did This Report

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General conducted this audit to determine whether costs claimed by the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program grant recipient, the IRL Council, were allowable, reasonable, allocable, and in accordance with grant terms and conditions for Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 and to determine whether the grant recipient demonstrated progress toward achieving program goals and objectives.

Summary of Findings

We identified that 35 percent of the $832,199 spent is not allowable, contrary to the requirements outlined in 2 C.F.R. part 200 and the terms and conditions of the cooperative agreement. For the expenditures we reviewed, we found these were reasonable and allocable. Furthermore, we found that the IRL Council does not adequately monitor the activities of its subrecipients, nor do all its subrecipients have adequate financial management systems, to ensure compliance with all relevant requirements. We determined that the IRL Council did not submit all the reports mandated by regulations and the terms and conditions. Despite these challenges, the IRL Council demonstrated progress implementing the goals stated in its IIJA work plans.

OIG selected the Patterns of Life exhibit as a case study of the Smithsonian’s content review process. This evaluation (1) determined the extent to which Cooper Hewitt followed Smithsonian’s content review policy when developing Patterns of Life and (2) identified opportunities to strengthen the content review process.

As part of our mission to safeguard HUD’s programs from fraud, waste, and abuse, and to identify opportunities for HUD programs to progress and succeed, we selected New Jersey for a review of potential improper payments.   Our audit objective was to determine whether New Jersey made improper non-Federal match activity payments.  We also assessed whether the Office of Community Planning and Development’s Office of Disaster Recovery (CPD ODR) had sufficient and adequate controls to prevent improper match payments.

New Jersey could not provide support for 17 of 64 Hurricane Sandy (27 percent) and all 8 Hurricane Irene (100 percent) items that we tested.  This occurred because New Jersey did not establish adequate controls for properly classifying, allocating, and tracking non-Federal match costs.  Consequently, these unsupported payments meet OMB’s definition of an improper payment because it could not be determined whether the payment was proper or improper due to the lack of documentation.  As of June 6, 2025, New Jersey still had more than $5.6 million of unspent HUD Sandy non-Federal match funds which, due to the inadequate controls, were at risk of being unsupported when paid.

Further, we found that New Jersey commingled its non-Federal match costs with other disaster recovery costs to support payments made by HUD funds that totaled $174,352.   These payments were improper because the other costs are not part of the non-Federal project’s total costs.  This occurred because New Jersey did not establish its own financial or payment controls to separately allocate, track, and report non-Federal match costs from other eligible disaster recovery costs.   Further, CPD’s policies did not require its grantees to separately report non-Federal match costs from other activities funded by disaster appropriations.  As a result, New Jersey was not transparently reporting the amounts of HUD disaster funding it spent on non-Federal match activities versus other eligible disaster recovery activities.  Instead, it overreported the amount it paid for non-Federal match activities, which increased the risk of potential improper payments.  In addition, due to the overreported amounts, HUD and its stakeholders cannot use DRGR system quarterly performance reports to ensure that New Jersey properly used its disaster recovery funds to meet the goals and objectives of the non-federal match portion of its projects.

We recommended that CPD ODR require all disaster recovery grantees to adopt consistent financial and internal controls to allocate and track non-Federal match activity costs that are paid with HUD disaster recovery funds.  We also recommended that New Jersey support or repay unsupported payments totaling more than $4.8 million.  Finally, we recommended that New Jersey revise its controls for non-Federal match costs and ensure that such costs are appropriately allocated, tracked and reported, thereby putting to better use more than $5 million at risk of future improper payments.

We determined that FNA did not have a process to ensure participating States, territories, and Indian Tribal Organizations that received an estimated $2.5 billion in fiscal year 2025 administered the Summer EBT program in accordance with eligibility and timeliness requirements.