DOT Should Establish New Accountability Measures for TIGER, GAO Says
The U.S. Department of Transportation should establish new accountability measures for the grant program known as TIGER, including documenting how decisions are made to award grants, a new report from the General Accountability Office said.
The DOT failed to document key decisions made in evaluating grant applications and selecting projects during the fifth round last year of the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grant program, the GAO said in its May 28 report.
DOT did not document decisions it made to review late applications, to advance projects with lower technical ratings over more highly rated projects, and to change technical ratings of lower-rated projects to the highest rating category, the report said.
U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-Louisiana ), who last year asked for the GAO review, quickly responded, saying the report validates his assertion that TIGER lacks transparency and that the Obama administration has politicized the grant program.
“There is a clear lack of transparency in the decision-making process and a mishandling of the management of the program,” Vitter said in a statement.
“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.
His statement was accompanied with the same map he used last year in his claim that more TIGER money goes to Democratic areas than Republican areas.
In its response to the GAO report, the DOT said it rejected 53 late applications and accepted only one for which it was documented there were problems with the government’s grant website.
In the future, DOT said, it will not change any grant ratings and has revised its documentation process to provide greater transparency on why grant decisions are made.
TIGER was begun in 2009 as part of the administration’s economic stimulus program and has been funded each year since by Congress.
So far, DOT has given out about $3.6 billion in grants to states, local governments and other entities for highway, transit, rail and port projects. The sixth round of grants will be announced in the coming months and will total $600 million.
