Federal Reports

On January 5, 2015, the Postal Service revised its First-Class Mail (FCM) service standards, eliminating single-piece overnight FCM service and shifting some mail from a 2-day to a 3-day service standard. These revisions enabled the Postal Service to expand its mail processing operational window to process mail on fewer machines, thus using less facility square footage. This is known as the operational window change OWC. The OWC also required changes in mail transportation. The Postal Service projected the OWC would save over $805 million annually. The objective of our audit was to determine if the Postal Service achieved its projected savings for the OWC.

During an investigation at Haskell Indian Nations University (Haskell), we found that employees of the Haskell Foundation (Foundation), a nonprofit corporation, utilize office space on the Haskell campus and manage the proceeds of grants to Haskell. We also found that Haskell and the Foundation had no written agreement governing their relationship. We believe that the absence of clear boundaries between the operations of Haskell and the Foundation creates the potential for legal violations concerning Government space and Federal grant management activities.We made two recommendations to help Haskell effectively manage its office space and Federal grant awards.

Wisconsin did not comply with Federal waiver and State requirements in overseeing centers that serve vulnerable adults who receive services through the Family Care program (the program). All 20 of the centers we reviewed did not comply with State certification requirements. In total, we found 208 instances of noncompliance with health and safety and administrative requirements.

Florence Crittenton Services of Orange County, Inc. (Crittenton), an Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program grantee located in Fullerton, California, did not always claim expenditures in accordance with applicable Federal requirements. Of the 135 sampled expenditure transactions that Crittenton claimed during fiscal years (FYs) 2014 and 2015, 90 transactions were allowable; however, 28 contained deficiencies, resulting in unallowable expenditures of $259,671 for employee-related and other costs. In addition to our sample results, we found that Crittenton claimed unallowable expenditures of $53,470 for equipment. In total, Crittenton claimed unallowable expenditures of $342,263, including $29,122 of unallowable indirect costs.

In accordance with the Reports Consolidation Act of 2000, the IG is providing information on the most serious management and performance challenges facing the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission for fiscal year 2019.