Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials failed to disclose as much as $7 billion in spending to the main federal internet website to inform the public about where their tax dollars are going, according to a government watchdog.
“The EPA’s initial reporting of its fiscal year 2022 spending in USAspending.gov was not complete or accurate. This occurred because the EPA’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) did not follow its information technology configuration management procedures,” the EPA inspector-general said in a report made public on Jan. 9.
“As a result, the EPA’s fiscal year 2022 award-level obligations were underreported by $1.2 billion, and its fiscal year 2022 award-level outlays were underreported by $5.8 billion. This means that 12.9 percent of the EPA’s total award-level obligations and 99.9 percent of the EPA’s total award-level outlays were not reported in fiscal year 2022. The EPA also did not report any of its Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act outlays and underreported its coronavirus pandemic-related outlays,” the report explains.
The result was that taxpayers were “initially misinformed about the EPA’s spending, and policy-makers who relied on the data may not have been able to effectively track federal spending.”
The agency’s 2023 budget was $10.1 billion, but it also administers more than $27 billion in grants under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) established by the Inflation Reduction Act. President Joe Biden appointed Michael Regan as EPA administrator in 2021.
The billions in EPA spending weren’t properly reported to USASpending.gov—which documents most federal expenditures and makes that data accessible to anybody with an internet connection—for multiple reasons.
Among those reasons, according to the report, were the failure of EPA officials to implement mandatory digital-spending evaluation and approval system controls, the absence of required digital-error detection procedures needed to confirm accuracy and comprehensiveness, and the fact agency leadership doesn’t require manual checks of the data sent to the website for public transparency.
The report said the unreported spending would have remained concealed from taxpayers had the inspector general’s auditors not discovered it and pointed it out to EPA officials. Agency officials agreed to implement multiple recommendations by the inspector general to ensure that all future EPA spending is made public, as required by law.
“USAspending.gov is the federal government’s official public source of spending information. The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 requires federal agencies to report complete and accurate spending data to USAspending.gov to facilitate transparency into how they spend taxpayer dollars,” the inspector-general said.
The release of the EPA inspector general’s report prompted House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) to condemn the unreported spending. Her panel has oversight authority for the EPA.
“It’s outrageous and unacceptable that the EPA cannot keep track of its spending or inform Congress—and the American people—of how it is using taxpayer dollars. This eye-opening report only further highlights the need for more transparency at the EPA,” Ms. McMorris Rodgers said in a statement.
“It also raises questions about whether the agency is incapable of managing its record-high budget or if the agency is attempting to hide the amount of taxpayer dollars it is spending to advance the administration’s radical rush-to-green agenda,” she said. “The Energy and Commerce Committee will continue holding this administration accountable for its actions that are driving up costs across the board and hurting Americans.”
An EPA spokesman told The Epoch Times that the agency “welcomes and appreciates the Office of the Inspector General’s oversight and recommendations. EPA properly accounted for FY 2022 funding, which is validated by OIG’s FY 2022 clean unmodified audit opinion of EPA’s financial statements. This was an issue transmitting data to USASpending.gov, which has been corrected.”
An EPA spokesman acknowledged receipt of the request by The Epoch Times for comment, but none was received as of press time.
Ms. McMorris Rodgers, with Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), who chairs the panel’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, and Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), who leads the Subcommittee on Environment, Manufacturing, and Critical Materials, told Mr. Regan in an October 2023 letter that they were concerned about EPA management of the GGRF.
“The GGRF implicates many oversight concerns. For example, the EPA’s Inspector-General recently testified before the committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations that newly created programs providing funding to new recipients on short timelines possess an increased vulnerability to fraud and execution errors,” the congressional leaders told Mr. Regan.
“Additionally, some have flagged that the EPA could use this program to subsidize favored special interest organizations. Others have alleged that current EPA appointees have ties to potential recipients of these sizable awards, raising ethical concerns,” they continued.
The congressional leaders referenced an analysis by the Protect the Public Trust (PPT), a nonprofit advocacy group that pushes for high standards in public service, of the backgrounds of multiple senior EPA political appointees and career civil servants that display potential conflicts of interest with GGRF grant recipients.
“Prior to joining EPA, current officials have worked for or with the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Resources Defense Council, and Earthjustice, as well as the Center for American Progress, and other activist organizations,” PPT analysis stated. “As the PPT recently noted, the EPA ’revolving door' has been spinning fast during the Biden administration, greased by career ethics personnel.”
