MARAD's port-grant team shrank during a $2.25 billion surge
Summary
A DOT Inspector General audit found the Maritime Administration lacks the risk-management tools, policies, and staff to properly oversee its $2.25 billion Port Infrastructure Development Program. A companion GAO review of six infrastructure-law grant programs -- including PIDP -- found the gap isn't unique to MARAD: DOT has not comprehensively assessed the risks its own grant recipients report facing, across any of its portfolio.
MARAD doesn't have the tools to size up its own risk
found never applied comprehensive risk-management tools to . The agency had started building a Process Level Risk Assessment but hadn't yet used it to test whether its own internal controls actually worked, and it lacked clear criteria for judging how risky an awarded project was after the money went out the door.
The gaps ran through the basics of grant administration. staff conducting site visits had no required checklist and no mandatory supervisory review of what they found. The agency's official policy for reviewing grantees' requests to draw down funds was a three-page document with no clear instructions or citations to the rules it was supposed to implement -- so thin that 's own Grants Management Team had quietly started using an unofficial nine-page version instead, one detailed enough that their own supervisor told he didn't know it existed. also had no instructions at all for reviewing the Federal Financial Reports grantees file; by contrast, noted, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's manual tells staff to check each report for specific red flags like excessive over- or under-spending.
One thing has bought time to fix this before it costs real money: as of August 2025, only about $6.5 million of the $2.25 billion in funds allocated to had actually been expended. was explicit that the weak reimbursement-review procedures could already have let unallowable costs slip through unnoticed in that $6.5 million -- but the vast majority of the funding hasn't moved yet, meaning the fixes recommended still have a portfolio's worth of spending left to apply to.
The team shrank as the money grew
's Grants Management Team -- the staff responsible for plus three other grant programs -- had 12 allotted positions as of October 2024, but four vacancies left only seven staff and one supervisor actually in place. By March 2025, the team was down to four people total. That's on top of a -wide vacancy rate separately measured at 12.3% (116 of 941 authorized positions) as of September 2024.
View data as table
| Allotted positions (Oct. 2024) | 12 |
|---|---|
| Actual staff in place (Oct. 2024) | 8 |
| Actual staff in place (March 2025) | 4 |
's Strategic Human Capital Plan, meant to make sure the agency has the right people in the right roles, expired in 2022 and never accounted for the extra oversight work funding created. As of this report, had no -specific hiring targets and hadn't analyzed its overall workforce needs; a February 2025 review had already found the agency's forthcoming workforce plan was missing key strategic-planning elements, and that plan still wasn't finished a year later.
Training lagged the money by years. didn't train staff on 2 C.F.R. Part 200 -- the federal rulebook governing grant management -- until April 2023, even though had been running since May 2019. A senior official blamed budget and staffing constraints. Neither Grants Management Team employee who answered 's questions had prior grant-management experience, and one described structured training as "nonexistent." had planned eight eLearning courses on the topic; only four were finished by the time closed its audit.
made eight recommendations covering the risk assessment, site-visit and reimbursement-review procedures, FFR instructions, the workforce plan, and the training courses. concurred with all eight and proposed completion dates; considers them resolved but still open pending that work.
The same gap shows up across DOT's whole portfolio
Zoom out from and the picture doesn't improve. authorized and appropriated more than $551 billion to overall. As of April 2025, had obligated 59% of the roughly $438 billion available for fiscal 2022 through 2025 -- more than $260 billion -- and outlaid over half of that to recipients. The remaining 41%, almost $178 billion, hadn't been obligated at all.
View data as table
| Obligated | 260 |
|---|---|
| Not yet obligated | 178 |
surveyed awardees of 316 projects between December 2024 and March 2025, across six fiscal-2022 discretionary grant programs: BUILD, the Bridge Investment Program, Low or No Emission bus grants, Nationally Significant Federal Lands and Tribal Projects, , and Rural Surface Transportation. awardees specifically flagged cost increases from inflation (69%), defining the project budget (59%), NEPA environmental review (55%), defining the project schedule (48%), Buy America requirements (45%), and securing matching funds (38%) as moderately or very challenging.
View data as table
| Cost increases from inflation | 69 |
|---|---|
| Defining the project budget | 59 |
| NEPA environmental review | 55 |
| Defining the project schedule | 48 |
| Buy America requirements | 45 |
| Securing matching funds | 38 |
Across all six programs surveyed -- not alone -- about 23% of awardees still didn't have a signed grant agreement when they responded to 's survey. 's conclusion was that has not comprehensively assessed the risk those kinds of challenges pose to getting money out the door: efforts it reviewed size up risk for a single program or a single project, but nothing looks across 's full portfolio of grant programs the way 's own missing risk assessment illustrates at the program level.
recommended give Congress complete obligation-and-outlay figures for its programs, and separately assess and respond to the risks awardees face signing grant agreements -- comprehensively identifying, assessing, and monitoring them, not just program by program. concurred with both.
The takeaway
- built the funding pipeline for before it built the tools to manage risk in it. It still hasn't finished a Process Level Risk Assessment, its reimbursement-review policy was thin enough that staff used an unofficial substitute, and it has no instructions at all for reviewing grantees' financial reports.
- The oversight team meant to manage all of this shrank as the money grew. 's Grants Management Team had 12 allotted positions in October 2024 but only 4 actual staff by March 2025 -- while $2.25 billion in new funding was on the books.
- found the same blind spot one level up. has not comprehensively assessed risk across any of its grant programs, even though awardees surveyed cited real, specific challenges -- from inflation to environmental review -- executing their grants.
The -specific findings are from Report ST2026020, ''s Policies and Procedures Are Not Sufficient To Assess Risk and Effectively Oversee -Funded Port Infrastructure Development Program Grants' (March 2, 2026), a self-initiated audit read directly and in full. The department-wide findings are from -25-107166, 'Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: Should Better Communicate Funding Status and Assess Risks' (July 2025), read directly for its funding-status figures and its -specific and cross-program survey results. 's report explicitly includes as one of six programs it surveyed, giving a direct, -confirmed link between the two documents' subject matter -- one examines 's internal processes for a single program, the other 's risk assessment across its broader grant portfolio.
Sources(2) ▾
- U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General, MARAD's Policies and Procedures Are Not Sufficient To Assess Risk and Effectively Oversee IIJA-Funded Port Infrastructure Development Program Grants (2026-03-02) — Report ST2026020, a self-initiated audit examining 's internal risk-management, oversight, workforce-planning, and training processes specifically for the Port Infrastructure Development Program () -- the agency-internal-process facet. A distinct facet from doc-gao-107166 (which surveys and other awardees' on-the-ground challenges and 's portfolio-wide risk assessment across six grant programs). Fetched directly from oig.dot.gov (HTTP 200); no Wayback capture needed since the live copy was directly reachable. oig.dot.gov · original document
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: DOT Should Better Communicate Funding Status and Assess Risks (2025-07-01) — -25-107166, a report to congressional addressees surveying awardees across six discretionary grant programs (including ) and assessing 's portfolio-wide risk management -- a distinct facet from doc-dot-oig-marad ('s -specific internal process gaps). Read in full directly from the PDF via the Wayback mirror (direct gao.gov fetch blocked with HTTP 403). gao.gov · original document
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The Port Infrastructure Development Program (), which funds port safety and efficiency projects, got a major funding jump when the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act () added $2.25 billion over five years starting in fiscal 2022 -- on top of a program that had run on roughly $225-293 million a year before that. A March 2026 DOT Inspector General audit⧉ found the Maritime Administration (), which runs , never built the risk-management tools, policies, or staff to match. A July 2025 GAO report⧉, surveying awardees across six discretionary grant programs including , found the same blind spot at the department level: has not comprehensively assessed the risks its own grantees report running into.