Leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee requested continued Government Accountability Office (GAO) oversight of a Department of Transportation (DoT) competitive grant program for transportation projects with regional or national significance on Friday.
Lack of documentation to explain why the first 18 projects were selected to receive grants under the Nationally Significant Freight and Highways Projects (NSHP) program, which was established under the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act of 2015, prompted the request.
In a joint statement, U.S. Reps. Bill Shuster (R-PA), the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Peter DeFazio (D-OR), the ranking member of the committee, Sam Graves (R-MO), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), the ranking member of the subcommittee, highlighted the importance of program transparency and accountability.
“It’s critical that the department, regardless of the administration, carry out this program as Congress intended, and that these competitive grants be evaluated and selected in a fair and transparent manner,” the lawmakers said. “There needs to be more clarity in this process in the future, and we have requested GAO’s continued assessment of the program to help ensure that happens.”
The GAO reported that it was unable to gauge the rationale for the selection of the 18 projects for the first round of competitive grants, known as Fastlane grants, based on available documentation.
“This documentation restated the anticipated benefits of the selected projects, but did not otherwise provide insight into why some projects were selected for awards over others,” the GAO report concluded. “Without complete documentation of the decision-making, the transparency of the application review and selection process is limited.”