Federal Reports

Cahaba Government Benefits Administrators, LLC, claimed $92,392 of unallowable Medicare fiscal intermediary and carrier contract pension costs on its Final Administrative Cost Proposals for fiscal years 2010 through 2013.

Cahaba Government Benefits Administrators, LLC, did not claim $2.7 million of allowable Medicare pension costs on its incurred cost proposals for calendar years 2008 through 2013.

Cahaba Safeguard Administrators, LLC, did not claim $104,958 of allowable Medicare pension costs on its incurred cost proposals for calendar years 2008 through 2013.

On behalf of the National Park Service (NPS), we conducted a quality control review (QCR) of an independent public accountant’s (IPA) fiscal year 2016 single audit of the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, an NPS grantee. The purpose of our QCR was to determine whether the IPA performed the single audit in accordance with all applicable auditing standards and the Code of Federal Regulations.Auditors may receive an overall QCR rating of pass, pass with deficiencies, or fail. Based on our review, we assigned an overall rating of fail to the IPA’s work because its audit documentation did not support the opinions expressed in the audit report. Our QCR revealed several major deficiencies in the IPA’s audit work, including an inadequate understanding of required internal controls, an unreasonable determination of certain compliance requirements, and the selection of an inappropriate type of data for its audit sampling.On January 29, 2018, we gave the IPA our QCR report and requested a response. The IPA disagreed with the rating we assigned, stating, “We believe the audit procedures performed and supporting file documentation were sufficient to allow us to meet our responsibilities as auditors, and that our audit documentation did support the opinions expressed in the audit report.” Because the IPA was unable to provide sufficient documentation of the procedures performed and evidence examined, however, we continue to assign the IPA a rating of fail.

We determined that Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority officials, through its main engineering contractor, presented incorrect data and misinformed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in obtaining a Federal grant of more than $33 million for its pipeline replacement and relocation project. We made four recommendations, directing FEMA to disallow the $33 million in grant funds awarded to the Authority for Project 828 — or $1.4 million if FEMA disallows $31.7 million of ineligible costs we questioned in our previous report (OIG-17-25-D; January 2017); and to coordinate with DHS for any applicable suspension and debarment actions. FEMA concurred with three recommendations. For the remaining recommendation, FEMA is awaiting additional documentation from the grantee and subgrantee before making a determination.