EPA slow to carry out plan for improving grants management
Guidelines for measuring environmental benefits from grant money were due last year.
The Environmental Protection Agency is running behind schedule on a plan to ensure that grant recipients spend money wisely, according to recent research by the Government Accountability Office.
Agency officials are off to a slow start implementing a five-part strategy for improving grants management, devised in spring 2003, GAO found in a report prepared for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment (GAO-04-983T). For instance, the EPA won't finish guidelines to help managers measure the environmental benefits reaped from grant money, scheduled for release in 2003, until the fall.
In the meantime, EPA grants managers have followed interim guidelines requiring them to show that award money is spent on projects that further the agency's overall mission. But the temporary rules don't require administrators to assess whether grants are directly helping achieve specific improvements to the environment, GAO noted.
Until the EPA puts in place a final policy holding administrators accountable for showing they've accomplished specific environmental aims, the agency will be unable to prove that the roughly $4 billion it disburses in grants each year has an "impact on protecting the nation's ... health and environment," the auditors said.
In 2003, not even a third of plans for using grant money discussed the detailed environmental outcomes the recipients hoped to achieve, GAO said. EPA managers told auditors that the impact of grant money is difficult to track in part "because of the time lapse between grant activities and a cleaner environment."
Such challenges underscore the need for complete guidelines on measuring benefits derived from grant money, GAO said. The agency's intent to issue final guidelines this fall is a step in the right direction, the auditors stated.
The delay is holding back implementation of other parts of the grants management strategy, GAO noted. For instance, a tutorial to help grants administrators learn to track and measure performance, originally scheduled to begin in 2003, is now scheduled to start in 2005, according to the auditors.
Even once guidelines for grant managers are complete, GAO cautioned that the EPA "has a long road ahead in educating its managers, supervisors and staff, as well as thousands of potential grantees, about the complexities of identifying and achieving environmental outcomes."