As billions of dollars in COVID-19 relief flowed into Washington communities, many local officials appear to have overlooked background checks on contractors or detailed accounting of money passed to nonprofit partners.
Recent audits from the Washington State Auditor’s Office show about half of the state’s counties had issues tracking and vetting federal grant spending amid evolving guidelines on complying with multiple emergency relief programs.
Local officials emphasized that most audits revealed relatively minor procedural oversights, while misuse or fraud remained rare. State auditors acknowledged local agencies had faced many new challenges in administering unprecedented federal aid, but stressed that detailed monitoring helped guard against abuse.
These audits of federal spending will trigger additional scrutiny of financial practices in the agency’s next annual audit, and in some rare cases could lead to requests from the federal government to return funding. Crosscut has not found any Washington cases where an audit led to returning money to the federal government.
