Federal Reports

The OIG conducted a program evaluation of Peace Corps/North Macedonia from December 2024 through June 2025.  Our objectives were to determine the post's effectiveness and compliance in the areas of Volunteer health and safety, project activities, training and support, and leadership. We found that the post met its project objectives and effectively supported Volunteers, with programming aligned to host country needs and substantial compliance with site management standards. However, we found issues with underdeveloped Volunteer assignments at some sites, lack of a sustainable backup coverage for safety and security staff, inefficient healthcare support processes, and gaps in cross-unit communication. The report contains 10 recommendations focused on strengthening partner engagement, improving safety and security coverage, enhancing medication procurement, assessing and supporting health unit capacity, and improving staff morale.

Background

In June 2023, the U.S. Postal Service authorized the creation of relief supervisor positions in customer service, mail processing, maintenance, and logistics. The intent of these newly created positions is to provide coverage for regular supervisors during their leave and scheduled days off and reduce the reliance on acting supervisors. Relief supervisors are responsible for performing the same job duties and have the same training requirements as regular supervisors. Relief supervisor positions are earned at the facility level using a ratio of one relief supervisor for every five authorized regular supervisors. As of fiscal year (FY) 2025, the Postal Service filled 1,949 of the 2,168 (89.9 percent) authorized relief supervisor positions nationwide.

What We Did

Our objective was to evaluate the establishment of the relief supervisor position and its impact on the workforce. We judgmentally selected 17 Postal Service facilities nationwide based on relief supervisor positions and interviewed headquarters personnel, facility managers, and relief supervisors to understand the position and responsibilities.

What We Found

Overall, we determined the relief supervisor position was implemented successfully to provide coverage for regular supervisors on leave and scheduled days off. We found 31 of 33 (93.9 percent) relief supervisors believed the position was aligned with the job description and were satisfied with the position.

However, we concluded that the Postal Service did not effectively reduce its reliance on acting supervisors when it brought on relief supervisors, as was intended. During FYs 2023 through 2025, facilities with relief supervisors still accounted for more than half of all acting supervisors’ hours used nationwide. This occurred due to lack of effective workhour management, detailing relief supervisors into other roles, and organizational changes. As a result, in FY 2025, we identified $62.7 million in questioned costs due to the increase in total relief supervisor and acting supervisor workhours.

Recommendations and Management’s Comments

We made two recommendations to address the issues identified, and Postal Service management disagreed with both recommendations. We will pursue the two disagreed recommendations through the audit resolution process. Management’s comments and our evaluation are at the end of each finding and recommendation.

Four former Amtrak employees, Kevin Frink, of Willingboro, New Jersey; Dion Jacob, of Brooklyn, New York David Lonergan, of Rockaway Park, New York, and Quinton Johnson of Irvington, New Jersey, were sentenced on January 8, 2026, February 18, 2026, March 4, 2026, and March 31, 2026, respectively, in U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey. Frink was sentenced to 2 years of probation and ordered to pay $460,174 in restitution; Jacob was sentenced to 2 years of probation and ordered to pay $1,315,259 in restitution; and Lonergan was sentenced to 3 years of probation, 4 months of home confinement and ordered to pay $627,801 in restitution; and Johnson was sentenced to 2 years of probation and ordered to pay $141,666 in restitution. According to court documents, Frink, Jacob, Lonergan, and Johnson were given cash kickbacks for allowing health care providers to use their insurance information to fraudulently bill Amtrak’s health care plan for services that were never provided and that were not medically necessary.