DALLAS — Inadequate documentation on how federal transportation grants are allotted raises questions about the integrity of the grant process, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released Wednesday.
The Transportation Department had inadequate documentation on why it accepted proposals for the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program in 2013 that came in after the submission deadline, the GAO said. DOT also advanced projects with low technical ratings, and changed the score of low-rated projects that were selected for TIGER funding to put them into the highest category, according to the report.
"An absence of documentation of such decisions can give rise to challenges to the integrity of the evaluation process and the rationale for the decisions made," GAO said in the report requested by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Vitter said the GAO report unveiled significant flaws in the TIGER grants program.
"There is a clear lack of transparency in the decision-making process and a mishandling of the management of the program," Vitter said.
The Senator said he requested the GAO report in April 2013 to provide oversight on the methods used for selecting TIGER grant recipients. Vitter asked how applications were advanced and selected to ensure the process is done in a transparent manner.
"The application and project selection process are major concerns because they lack any merit-based structure and transparency, making the program more about political needs versus our infrastructures needs," he said.
The GAO said in a 2011 review of the TIGER program that "DOT cannot definitively demonstrate the basis for its award selections, particularly the reasons why recommended projects were selected for half the awards over highly recommended ones."
DOT has distributed $4.2 billion in TIGER grants through five grant cycles since it was established in the 2009 federal stimulus act, according to the GAO.
Applications for the $600 million of TIGER grants to be awarded in 2014 topped more than $9.5 billion, DOT said earlier this month.
The Obama administration's $302 billion, four-year surface transportation infrastructure proposal would fund the TIGER program at $5 billion over four years, with $1 billion per year of competitive grants and a cumulative $1 billion of discretionary grants.
The DOT's 2015 budget bill approved May 21 by the House Appropriations Committee would provide $100 million for TIGER grants.
