Report Says FHWA Has Unused Millions

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he Federal Highway Administration has at least $284 million — and perhaps nearly $400 million — in unused funds for transportation projects that should be reallocated to projects where they will be used, the Transportation Department’s inspector general said last week.

In its third audit of FHWA’s follow-through on transportation grants to state and local governments, the IG said the agency’s administrator should take “more aggressive steps” to account for allocated funds so they are not left idle.

Although FHWA said that “dealing with inactive obligations has been an emphasis area for the past few years,” the inspector general’s report said that “the continued existence of hundreds of millions of dollars of idle obligations . . . suggests otherwise.”

Federal Highway Administrator Mary Peters responded to the report with a memorandum that said the issue of inactive fund obligations “has been an emphasis with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) during the past few years.”

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