Page 1 GAO-24-106334 Tracking the Funds
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022 designated a total of $9.1 billion for
4,963 projects at the request of Members of Congress. The act and its
accompanying joint explanatory statement (JES) included specific provisions
designating a certain amount of funds for particular recipients, such as nonprofit
organizations or local governments, to use for a specific project. These
provisions are called Community Project Funding (CPF) in the House of
Representatives and Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) in the Senate.
Projects for fiscal year (FY) 2022 are administered by 18 federal agencies.
The JES includes a provision for us to review a sample of projects as part of
Congress’s commitment to increased transparency for CPF/CDS funds. For this
report, we examined the status of FY 2022 projects, and how agencies are
overseeing project implementation, by reviewing a stratified random sample of
162 projects that can be generalized to the full population of projects. Our
Tracking the Funds website provides additional information on these projects as
well as those funded in FY 2023, including obligation and outlay information. The
website will be updated with information about projects in FY 2024 and
subsequent fiscal years.
• Generally, recipients planned to use the funds for their intended purposes
specified in the FY 2022 appropriations and the accompanying JES. The
recipients’ descriptions of projects’ purposes were broadly consistent with the
JES descriptions. Specifically, we found that all of the projects in our sample
that moved forward with funding had a purpose that aligned with the project
purpose described in the JES. Based on our sample, we estimate that 97 to
100 percent of all FY 2022 CPF/CDS projects had a purpose that aligned with
the project purpose described in the JES.
• At the time of our review, agencies and recipients told us that they would not
move forward with the designated CPF/CDS funds for four projects in our
sample for various reasons, such as the project receiving funding from an
alternate source.
• About half of the recipients in our sample who reported spending data began
spending FY 2022 CPF/CDS funds by June 30, 2023, and 9 percent had
spent all of their funds by this date.
• Most recipients reported receiving technical assistance from federal agencies
to help them navigate the funding process. However, most recipients also
reported that they faced challenges completing the steps necessary to
receive and implement the funds. Among these, some recipients reported
difficulty navigating agency application processes and lack of clear or timely
U.S. Government Accountability Office
TRACKING
THE
FUNDS:
Sample of Fiscal Year 2022 Projects Shows
Funds Were Awarded for Intended Purposes
but Recipients Experienced
Some Challenges
-24-106334
Report to Congressional Committees
