Federal Reports

An Amtrak lead service/train attendant based in New Orleans, Louisiana, resigned from her position on July 18, 2022, prior to her administrative hearing. Our investigation found that the former employee violated company policies by engaging in outside employment while on a medical leave of absence. During an interview with our agents, the former employee admitted she had been employed as a full-time contract driver for a trucking company while on medical leave from the company.

The objective of our audit was to determine whether the California Department of Education (California) appropriately allocated Immediate Aid to Restart School Operations (Restart) program funds and ensured that local educational agencies (LEA) and nonpublic schools used Restart program funds for allowable and intended purposes.We found that California appropriately allocated 2018 and 2019 Restart program funds to LEAs and nonpublic schools. Although we did not identify any unallowable costs at the two LEAs whose uses of Restart program funds we reviewed, we found that California needs to improve its processes for ensuring that LEAs use Restart program funds for allowable and intended purposes. Specifically, California did not always adhere to its established procedures for reimbursement of expenditures for the 2018 Restart program, including not obtaining supporting documentation for $103,124 in expenditures for two LEAs; did not timely monitor the Restart program; and did not ensure remittance of interest earned on Restart program funds that were advanced to LEAs.

The objectives of the audit were to determine whether the State of Oklahoma (Oklahoma) designed and implemented awarding processes that ensured that the Governor's Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER grant) was used to support local educational agencies (LEA) and institutions of higher education (IHE) that were most significantly impacted by the coronavirus or LEAs, IHEs, or other education-related entities within the State that were deemed essential for carrying out emergency educational services; and monitoring processes to ensure that subgrantees used GEER grant funds in accordance with the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) and other applicable Federal requirements.Oklahoma did not award all of its GEER grant funds in accordance with the CARES Act, Federal regulations, Department guidance, and GEER grant conditions.

What We Looked AtThe Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act provided the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with $10 billion to help airports deal with the public health emergency caused by Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19). FAA awarded $9.1 billion in grants to airports nationwide, using its existing Airport Improvement Program (AIP) to distribute the funds. Our objective for this self-initiated audit was to assess whether FAA’s policies and procedures for awarding and overseeing CARES Act grants are sufficient to protect taxpayer interests. What We FoundLeveraging the AIP allowed FAA to announce CARES Act awards for more than 3,000 airports in just 2 weeks. However, changes in the Agency’s oversight process regarding supporting documentation requirements affected its ability to monitor program performance, and we determined at the time of our review that it contributed to more than $271 million in unsupported costs, $85 million in questioned costs, and $3 million of improper payments. FAA also did not establish procedures for deobligating CARES Act grants that become inactive, exceed the period of performance, or provide airport sponsors with adequate guidance on documenting workforce retention data. These internal control weaknesses hindered FAA’s ability to ensure that it is operating the program as Congress intended, administering projects in a fiscally responsible manner, and achieving reporting and compliance objectives. Our RecommendationsWe are making seven recommendations to improve FAA’s oversight of COVID relief funds. FAA concurred with recommendations 5–7 and provided completion dates. The Agency partially concurred with recommendations 1–4. Based on documentation FAA provided after our review was completed, we consider recommendation 1 resolved but open pending completion of planned actions, recommendations 2 and 3 resolved and closed, and recommendation 4 unresolved. We are asking FAA to reconsider its position and provide us with a revised response within 30 days of the date of this report.

The objective was to determine the extent to which the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) manage and enforce the priority trade issue related to intellectual property rights (IPR).