The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development – Office of Inspector General selected the City of Joplin, MO’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Disaster Recovery program for audit because the City was awarded more than $45 million in CDBG Disaster Recovery funds in April 2012 and an additional $113 million in May 2013.  In addition, we had not audited the City’s activities for at least 10 years.  Our audit objective was to determine whether the City complied with CDBG Disaster Recovery regulations.

The City complied with CDBG Disaster Recovery regulations.  It generally performed contracting activities, obligated and expended its disaster funds, and conducted other initial program actions in accordance with applicable regulations.  This was a limited audit since the City had procured only two Disaster Recovery-related items, obligated only $50,000, and expended only $20,280 of its $45.2 million in Disaster Recovery funds at the time of our audit.  We audited 100 percent of the City’s obligations and 49 percent of its expenditures.  This is the first in a series of audits that we plan to conduct on the City’s CDBG Disaster Recovery program.

This report contains no formal recommendations and no further action is necessary.