Federal Reports

The OIG investigated allegations that a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) official was not authorized to use a Government-owned vehicle (GOV) for home-to-work commuting, traveled to his home state for personal reasons under the guise of work trips, inappropriately interfered in a hiring action to select a lesser-qualified applicant, and planned to relocate a BLM office to another state to personally benefit from the move.We found that, from July 2017 to June 2018, the BLM official used a GOV for home-to-work commuting without authorization. We did not substantiate any of the other allegations. We did not investigate the allegation that the official planned to relocate a BLM office to another state to personally benefit from a Government-funded move because this proposed move was part of a larger reorganization by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The OIG investigated an allegation that Tracy Bronson, the former Executive Director of Calhoun Conservation District (CCD) in Marshall, MI, stole U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant funds from the CCD. We conducted this investigation jointly with the EPA OIG and the Michigan State Police.We determined that between 2014 and 2017, Bronson embezzled over $550,000 from the CCD’s credit union account, which included grant funds awarded to the CCD by the FWS and the EPA. We found that between 2014 and 2017, the FWS awarded the CCD approximately $331,651 in grant funds.Bronson resigned from her position with the CCD and pleaded guilty to one count of theft concerning programs receiving Federal funds in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. She was sentenced to 37 months in prison and ordered to pay $573,159.20 in restitution.

Our review found that the Peace Corps did not fully comply with applicable Federal requirements relating to cooperative agreements and lacked internal controls in making the award to Seed Global Health Services. Specifically, the Peace Corps did not have sufficient documentation to justify awarding the cooperative agreement without competition. This made the Peace Corps vulnerable to the perception of favoritism by obligating a total of approximately $7.5 million in Department of State funding to Seed Global Health Services. We found several weaknesses caused by insufficient controls: the lack of segregation of duties for a senior agency official, the lack of key policies governing cooperative agreements, poor file management and failure to obtain the necessary anti-lobbying certifications from Seed Global Health Services. This report makes five recommendations to help enhance controls over cooperative agreements.

The objective of our audit was to evaluate the Office of Special Education Programs’ (OSEP) implementation of its differentiated monitoring and support (DMS) component under the results driven accountability initiative. We found that OSEP needs to enhance its implementation of the DMS component under the results driven accountability initiative to help ensure that it plans and conducts DMS properly and consistently across all States. Specifically, OSEP did not have sufficient policies and procedures for how personnel should perform and document the four phases of DMS (1) performing organizational assessments of States, (2) designating engagement levels for States, (3) issuing notices and charts to States, and (4) conducting and documenting tasks and activities for the DMS areas. To implement DMS, OSEP changed the way it monitored States to a method that is based on OSEP’s assessment of States’ needs in meeting performance standards and complying with legal requirements. Our review of OSEP’s DMS documentation in the results and compliance areas for the 12 States included in our review showed that OSEP did not: (1) include applicable or consistent data to assess risk for 6 of the 12 State organizational assessments we reviewed; (2) notify 1 of the 12 States on the applicable factors that contributed to the DMS engagement level designation; or (3) document monitoring, technical assistance, or support activities properly or sufficiently for 11 of the 12 States we reviewed.