FMC Missed Its Own Deadline. Its Watchdog Has Two Employees.
Summary
The Federal Maritime Commission's inspector general audited how the agency calculates the user fees it charges shipping intermediaries, found six problems, and got management's agreement to fix the first one by the end of 2025. Its own Spring 2026 report to Congress shows all six recommendations still open, four months past that deadline -- tracked by an office whose entire staff is two people, one of them on loan from another agency's watchdog for investigations.
A promise with a due date, and no fix
The audit⧉, issued April 30, 2025, found FMC's overhead-rate math assumes every employee in four separate offices -- the Office of the Secretary, Consumer Affairs and Dispute Resolution Services, the Bureau of Trade Analysis, and the Bureau of Certification and Licensing -- is 100% dedicated to processing user fees, with no documentation to support that assumption. FMC management agreed with the finding and told the it anticipated finishing the fix -- documenting the allocation rationale and starting a biennial review -- 'by the end of the first quarter of 2026,' which closed December 31, 2025. The Spring 2026 semiannual report⧉ records a different outcome: as of April 8, 2026, FMC's Deputy Managing Director told the only that 'a working group has been formed and is meeting regularly to address all the recommendations.' Not one of the audit's six recommendations had closed.
It isn't the first time. In 2010, the same reviewed FMC's fee methodology and concluded the fees were set too low to recover the government's full cost of providing the service -- the identical underlying problem the 2025 audit re-diagnosed fifteen years later, this time as a documentation and tracking failure rather than an outright math error.
View data as table
| User Fees Methodology (Apr. 2025) | 6 | 6 of 6 recommendations still open; a working group formed as of April 2026 but nothing closed. |
|---|---|---|
| FISMA compliance, FY2024 (Jul. 2024) | 2 | 2 of 3 open; one targeted for the next FISMA audit, the other for Q2 FY2027. |
| IT Vulnerability Report (Sep. 2023) | 1 | 1 of 8 open, targeted for Q2 FY2027 -- nearly 3.5 years after the finding. |
Two people, three open audits, one borrowed investigator
The User Fees Methodology audit isn't an outlier in FMC's backlog. Table I of the same semiannual report shows two of three recommendations from a July 2024 FISMA compliance audit⧉ still open, one of them targeted for the second quarter of fiscal 2027 -- nearly three years after the finding. A September 2023 Information Technology Vulnerability Report has closed seven of its eight recommendations, but the last one carries the same target: Q2 FY2027, close to 42 months after the finding was issued.
View data as table
| User Fees Methodology | 12 | Issued April 30, 2025; management's own Dec. 31, 2025 target for the first fix already missed by 4 months. |
|---|---|---|
| FISMA compliance, FY2024 | 21 | Issued July 31, 2024; one recommendation still targets Q2 FY2027, roughly 11 months further out. |
| IT Vulnerability Report | 31 | Issued September 28, 2023; the last recommendation targets Q2 FY2027, for a total lifespan near 42 months. |
The office tracking all of this has two full-time positions: the Inspector General and one auditor. To do the job, it leans on other agencies. It has a standing memorandum of understanding with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration for legal advice, and during this reporting period it drew on a separate MOU with the Appalachian Regional Commission's for investigative help. The report says the office 'devoted a substantial portion of its two-person office capacity' during the period to one resource-intensive investigation involving 'extensive document review, interviews, and coordination with external entities' -- work it was pursuing alongside three open hotline complaints and the routine audit-recommendation follow-up above.
- All 6 recommendations from FMC's April 2025 User Fees Methodology audit remain open as of the April 30, 2026 report to Congress -- four months past management's own December 31, 2025 target for the first fix.
- Two older audits carry unresolved recommendations too: 2 of 3 from a July 2024 FISMA compliance audit and 1 of 8 from a September 2023 IT Vulnerability Report, the latter now targeted for the second quarter of FY2027 -- close to 3.5 years after the finding.
- The 's entire staff is two people -- the Inspector General and one auditor -- who rely on a memorandum of understanding with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration for legal help and, this period, one with the Appalachian Regional Commission's for investigative capacity.
- This is a repeat problem: a 2010 review of the same user-fee methodology reached the same conclusion -- fees set without properly capturing the government's full cost -- fifteen years before the 2025 audit found it again.
None of the open recommendations carries a questioned-cost or funds-put-to-better-use dollar figure in the 's own reporting tables -- the finding here is a documentation and internal-control gap in how fees are calculated, not a specific dollar loss. FMC management agreed with every finding in the User Fees Methodology audit; the gap this piece documents is between that agreement and the office's own stated timeline for acting on it.
Sources(2) ▾
- Federal Maritime Commission Office of Inspector General, Office of Inspector General Semiannual Report to Congress, Covering the Period October 1, 2025 -- March 31, 2026 (2026-04-30) — The FMC 's statutory semiannual report to Congress, transmitted April 30, 2026 and posted on the agency's own domain. Describes the office's two-person staffing, its MOUs for borrowed legal and investigative capacity, its open hotline complaints and investigation, and -- in Table I -- the status of corrective actions on its three most recent audits, including the Deputy Managing Director's April 8, 2026 memo on why none of the User Fees Methodology audit's six recommendations have closed. fmc.gov · original document
- Federal Maritime Commission Office of Inspector General (performed by Harper, Rains, Knight & Company, P.A.), Audit of the FMC's User Fees Methodology (A25-02) (2025-04-30) — The -contracted performance audit of how FMC calculates the user fees it charges Ocean Transportation Intermediaries for licenses, petitions, and other services. Found FMC 'partially complied' with Circular A-25 cost-recovery guidance, identified six areas of concern (each with FMC management's own target completion quarter), and reports FY2023 user-fee revenue of over $425,000. Hosted on oversight.gov, 's official federal- portal. oversight.gov · original document
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The Federal Maritime Commission's Office of Inspector General hired an outside CPA firm to audit how the agency calculates the user fees it charges⧉ Ocean Transportation Intermediaries for licenses, petitions, and other services -- fees that brought in over $425,000 in fiscal 2023 alone. The auditors found six problems and set target dates with FMC management for fixing each one, the first by the end of calendar 2025. FMC's reported to Congress⧉ on April 30, 2026 -- four months past that deadline -- that all six recommendations are still open.