WASHINGTON — The Department of Transportation’s inspector general is warning that at least 10 airport improvement program grants distributed by the Federal Aviation Administration under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act “may have questionable economic merit or could involve recipients that have had grant management problems.”
Inspector general Calvin L. Scovel 3d questioned ARRA grants made to airports in Alaska, Ohio, Washington, Missouri, Delaware, Guam, Kentucky, Colorado, and Puerto Rico in announcing findings from an ongoing assessment of the implementation of the ARRA.
However, deputy transportation secretary John D. Porcari argued that the grants questioned by the inspector general represent only a fraction of the 263 projects selected for AIP recovery grants.
About 80% of projects the FAA tapped for AIP funds “not only met, but far exceeded the existing standards established for AIP grants,” Porcari said. The remaining 20% of projects “fulfilled other important aspects of the AIP program.”
The ARRA authorized $1.1 billion of transportation grants for AIP projects. As of August, nearly $874 million of the AIP recovery funds were obligated, and $38.7 million had been disbursed. While AIP funds are not used to back bonds, they are used by bond issuers to pay for about 21% of the cost of infrastructure development, according to the Airports Council International-North America.
Scovel’s audit, formally launched last month, was prompted partly by a discrepancy between the FAA’s ratings of projects that received ARRA funds and the rating threshold that had been set by the agency.
The FAA makes its decisions about AIP grant recipients based on a “national priority rating.” The rating of zero to 100 is based on a project’s potential to improve safety, security, and capacity, or mitigate environmental effects. In a normal funding situation — as opposed to the awarding of ARRA grants — an eligible project would be expected to have a rating of at least 40 to 42.
The FAA decided to raise the bar to 62 for ARRA grants, so that “the highest-priority” projects would be selected, the inspector general said. However, it awarded grants to “more than 50 projects” that fell below the new threshold rating, according to Scovel, who acknowledged the FAA said lower-ranked projects would not necessarily be ineligible for the ARRA funds.
The projects selected raised “concerns about whether the agency’s process resulted in funding the highest-priority ARRA projects,” the IGsaid.
Grants of potentially “questionable” economic merit included $13.9 million and $14.7 million to replace airports in Akiachak and Ouzinkie, Alaska, Scovel said. Another four ARRA-funded projects — $4.8 million for a new taxiway at Ohio’s Findlay Airport, $2.2 million for a runway extension at Washington’s Wilbur Airport, $2 million for an apron at Missouri’s Warrensburg-Skyhaven Airport, and almost $1 million to design a new runway near Dover, Del. — drew concerns because the airports provide no commercial passenger service and were rated below 62.
In addition, “past audit findings highlight the need for increased FAA oversight of some ARRA grant recipients,” the inspector said. Four recipients — the Guam International Airport Authority, Owensboro-Daviess County, Ky., Pitkin County, Colo., and the Puerto Rico Port Authority — won about $15 million of ARRA grants, “although auditors identified long-standing problems” in areas such as cash management and procurement, the report said.
But Porcari said the FAA was “rigorous” in its evaluation of “the highest-priority projects by region.” It gave preference to projects that were “ready to go,” as defined in the recovery act. Furthermore, the scoring system is “one of several tools FAA uses” to rank projects, he said.
A group representing airport executives yesterday defended the FAA’s selections for ARRA grants.
“It just doesn’t seem like there’s something that really sticks out as being an egregious error in spending of taxpayer money,” said Brad Van Dam, vice president of the Airport Legislative Alliance. “I think it’s interesting that the FAA is getting pinged” for funding runway safety improvements and the like.”
