Financial Management

In response to a congressional request, GAO examined the expenditures of the Department of the Interior's Office of the Solicitor to determine how it spent appropriated funds for fiscal year (FY) 1986, focusing on the number of staff it assigned to the Office of Surface Mining (OSM) and the amount of funds it spent to support OSM.

GAO found that: (1) in FY 1986 and 1985, Congress provided the Office lump-sum appropriations; (2) the Office's budget submissions broke down expected obligations by several programs and activities, such as surface mining; (3) the Office was statutorily free to determine how it distributed the funds among the various programs and activities, since the appropriations did not specify how it was to allocate funds or require it to submit reprogramming requests regarding the distribution of the lump-sum appropriations; (4) the Office has submitted three quarterly reports to Congress and is preparing the fourth quarterly report; (5) during FY 1986, the Office assigned 82 individuals to OSM activities; (6) 60.5 full-time-equivalent positions were directly associated with OSM in FY 1986; and (7) during FY 1986, the Office estimated that the Washington activity would spend about $3.9 million to support OSM legal matters, but the obligations incurred were about $2.7 million.