Federal Reports

We conducted a performance audit of the Michigan Arts and Culture Council (Council) for the period of October 1, 2020 through September 30, 2023.  Based on our review, we determined the Council met program requirements for each award and generally complied with award criteria.  However, we identified opportunities for improvement in the Council’s subawarding and award management procedures and controls, and issues with select subrecipient costs.  We provided 12 recommendations to address the report findings – five to the Council and seven to the Arts Endowment.  We believe these recommendations, if implemented, will help ensure the Council meets Federal and Arts Endowment requirements and better manages its awards.

Priority Mail Express (PME), formerly Express Mail, was introduced in the 1970s as the U.S. Postal Service’s fastest product, and as the best option for customers to send time-sensitive documents and packages by offering a next-day to two-day service guarantee. Recent transformations to postal operations under the Delivering for America plan are changing the service standards for this premium product. Specifically, in October 2023, the Postal Service deployed a major operational change called Local Transportation Optimization (LTO) that reduced the number of transportation trips to and from select post offices. With LTO, mail collected at optimized post offices remained overnight, delaying its entry into sorting operations. As a result, most optimized post offices can no longer offer PME with a next-day service guarantee. To support this change, on April 1, 2025, the Postal Service revised PME to a one-to-three-day service guarantee.