Bureau of Indian Affairs Violated Antideficiency Act in 1977

A Bureau of Indian Affairs violation of the Antideficiency Act in fiscal year 1977 was an overobligation of at least $186,000, but perhaps as much as $13 million. It was not reported to the Office of Management and Budget and to Congress as required by law, and because problems permitting the violation prevailed throughout most of fiscal 1978, the Bureau may have had another Antideficiency Act violation that year. The Antideficiency Act was violated when the Bureau exceeded its fiscal 1977 obligational authority for the operation of Indian programs appropriation.

In attempting to alleviate the overobligation and avoid requesting a deficiency appropriation, the Bureau made a series of questionable adjustments. It dropped hundreds of valid obligations from the records and transferred many of them to the fiscal 1978 appropriation. An unsupported adjustment of $300,000 was made so that the Bureau's report on obligation status would show an unexpended balance. In this way, many unrecorded but valid field offices' obligations found after yearend could be included in the Bureau's records without showing an overobligation. The Bureau should have sought a deficiency appropriation to cover obligations for these costs. The actions to shift the fund shortages unnecessarily increased the Bureau's administrative costs. Two factors contributed to the Bureau's violation of the Antideficiency Act: (1) its budgeting and fiscal reporting systems did not contain controls to keep obligations within amounts specified in appropriation acts, and (2) extensive delays in recording obligations made it necessary to record numerous valid obligations after the books were initially closed for fiscal 1977. Both fund control problems have persisted for years in the Bureau's financial system. Measures to prevent overobligations may have resulted.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: John F. Simonette Team: General Accounting Office: Financial and General Management Studies Division Phone: (202) 275-1581