At least $124 million was lost to waste, fraud and abuse in a single year because Department of Transportation officials haven’t “established a single line of accountability” for a program intended to help disadvantaged small businesses, according to a report.
The Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program, which received $4 billion in 2009 and $3 billion in 2010, was created to help socially and economically struggling small business owners to contract with the DOT, according to the department’s inspector general.
The department has difficulty determining if the DBE program achieves its objectives and if it communicates properly with state and local recipients of the money it distributes, with a result that billions of dollars in annual spending cannot be accounted for, the IG said.
According to the report, it took weeks for the IG to obtain award abd paytment data for the years 2007 through 2010 from the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration (all recipients of DBE funds). Ineligible business have also been allowed to receive funds due to poor certification processes.
Without increasing guidance and training of its management, the DBE program will continue to be exposed to billions of dollars in fade, waste and abuse, the report said.
Kelly Cohen is a member of The Washington Examiner Watchdog reporting team. She can be reached at [email protected].
