Reports

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act was signed into law and included a division coined the Emergency Unemployment Insurance Stabilization Access Act of (EUISSA) 2020. The EUISSA authorizes the Department of Labor (DOL) to transfer emergency administrative grants (grants0 to states’ Unemployment Trust Fund for the amount of $1 billion to administer its Unemployment Insurance (UI) program. DOL to date has provided the $1 billion in grants to states to administer the UI program. This audit will determine if DOL provided adequate oversight of states’ use of emergency administrative grant funds authorized under the EUISSA 2020.

Federal agencies were allocated more than $5 trillion in pandemic response funding to be disbursed to the public and to state and local governments, where a state or local government could have received pandemic response funds from multiple federal programs to improve the overall pandemic response in their communities. Access to information about the total amount of funds received, the purpose of those funds, and the progress made toward achieving the program goals and objectives is not always centralized and can be difficult for the public to track down or may not even be available to the public. The PRAC will conduct impact case studies at 6 different locations and seek to identify the federal pandemic response funds provided to the 6 locations and the purpose of those funds, and to determine if the federal program spending aligned with the intended goals and objectives. The 6 locations identified for this project include: Springfield, Massachusetts; Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Marion County, Georgia; Sheridan County, Nebraska; White Earth Indian Nation, Minnesota; and Jicarilla Apache Nation, New Mexico.