U.S. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA) has successfully garnered a federal audit by the U.S. Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General (OIG) of a state transportation project that’s going off the rails in California.
“The continued mismanagement and skyrocketing costs are unacceptable,” Rep. Denham said about the state project initially expected to cost $33 billion. The new price tag has ballooned to $77 billion.
“Taxpayers deserve to know how their money is being spent. I will continue to provide aggressive oversight and stop all federal funding,” said Rep. Denham, chairman of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, who requested the federal audit in December 2017.
In specific response to that request, the OIG announced on April 12 that it has initiated an audit of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) High-Speed Rail Grant Risk Mitigation and Oversight of Expenditures.
OIG noted in its audit summary announcement that since 2009, Congress has appropriated over $10 billion for the High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail (HSIPR) Program and as of December 2017, the FRA had disbursed $8.6 billion of those funds.
“Nearly 39 percent of HSIPR program funding to date has been dedicated to California’s high-speed rail corridor between San Francisco and Los Angeles, managed by the California High-Speed Rail Authority,” said OIG, which plans to first focus on the state’s high-speed rail project and specifically assess FRA’s risk analysis, assessment and mitigation efforts — particularly the availability of non-federal matching funds, business plans and financial reporting — and procedures for determining whether spent federal funds complied with federal laws and regulations.
Those are exactly the facts Rep. Denham requested OIG investigate. In fact, Denham said he was concerned the California High-Speed Rail Program posed “significant risks” to federal and California taxpayers due to cost overruns, missed deadlines and project mismanagement by state officials as the reasons for requesting the audit in his Dec. 11, 2017 letter to U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Calvin Scovel.
“In my interpretation, these risks have not been fully analyzed by the Department of Transportation (DOT) and continue to provide a liability,” the subcommittee chairman wrote.
In addition to the federal audit, the California State Legislature’s Joint Audit Committee in January unanimously approved the first state audit since 2012 to look into the state project’s cost increases, according to Denham’s staff.