Reports

EPA Did Not Conduct Agencywide Risk Assessment of CARES Act Appropriations, Increasing Risk of Fraud, Waste, Abuse, and Mismanagement.

We found that the State has met or exceeded targets for testing individuals for COVID‑19, but contact tracing throughout the State has lagged behind case surges that have far exceeded Public Health’s initial planning

We conducted an audit of five local governments who play a key role in a Continuum of Care (CoC). Our assessment of CoC agencies—groups of organizations, including local government agencies and homeless service providers, that receive funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to work toward ending homelessness within specified geographic areas—focused on best practices related to homeless services. In general, we determined that the State continues to struggle to coordinate its efforts to address homelessness, and CoCs do not always comply with federal regulations or...

The economic shutdowns in early 2020 led to historically high numbers of UI claims in a very short time (claim surge), and further shutdowns began in December 2020, raising the potential for additional spikes in unemployment. This audit reviewed EDD’s response to the claim surge, its handling of the resulting backlog of unpaid claims, and the assistance it has provided to individuals through its call center

This letter report provides an update on our assessment of the State’s management of federal funds related to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a high risk statewide issue.

This report concludes that the five courts we reviewed for this audit—the superior courts in Alameda, Contra Costa, Lake, Orange, and San Bernardino counties—adhered to most of the required and recommended procurement and contracting practices that we evaluated, but they could improve in certain areas.

On 27 March 2020, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which provided emergency assistance and healthcare response for individuals, families, and businesses affected by the Coronavirus disease. Section 3610 of the CARES Act provided agencies discretionary authority to reimburse costs of paid leave to federal contractors and subcontractors using existing appropriations to keep these individuals in a ready state and to protect the life and safety of government and contractor personnel. Given the unprecedented circumstances surrounding these Section 3610...

Since the surge in pandemic‑related California unemployment claims began in March 2020, individuals, news organizations, and law enforcement officials have reported many cases of potential and actual UI fraud. Not surprisingly, the pandemic conditions increased EDD’s UI workloads and also resulted in changes to federal UI benefit programs, both of which have created a greater risk of fraud.

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