Shocking Amount of Hurricane Sandy Government Relief Money Unspent

May 25, 2024 11:22 pm

Nearly a dozen years after Hurricane Sandy devastated the East Coast, government agencies have yet to spend billions in relief money.

Forget returning that legal tender to taxpayers. The feds want to know why the Hurricane Sandy funds remain unspent.

This is according to a memo that the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General sent to the federal transit administrator last week.

Hurricane Sandy battered the mid-Atlantic and northeastern United States’ transportation infrastructure in October 2012. The Disaster Relief Appropriations Act (DRAA) allocated $10.9 billion to the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Public Transportation Emergency Relief Program. Recipients were to use this money to help patch up the damage.

FTA officials said at the time that they expected to spend the money within eight years.

“Of the $10.9 billion, FTA retained approximately $10 billion to obligate to grant recipients for Hurricane Sandy-related recovery, relief, and resiliency programs, FTA has obligated just over 99 percent ($9.9 billion) of this funding to 16 total grant recipients,” said Carolyn J. Hicks, assistant inspector general for Acquisition and Procurement Audits.

“As of March 2024—almost 12 years after Hurricane Sandy’s impact—approximately $3.8 billion of these grant funds remain unspent.”

The top five recipients of this funding represent 97 percent ($9.6 billion) of the obligations and 99 percent ($3.8 billion) of the unexpended funds.

Recipients include the following:

• The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (NYMTA)

• The New Jersey Transit Corporation (NJTC)

• The Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation (PATH)

• The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ)

• The New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT).

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“Our Agency’s prior work identified concerns with FTA’s tracking and oversight of its Hurricane Sandy funds, including issues with timely recipient expenditure of the funds,” Hicks wrote.

Hicks said she and her colleagues will audit the unspent money. This, given the significant amount of time that has passed since Hurricane Sandy and the magnitude of dollars involved,

Hurricane Sandy was the second-largest Atlantic storm on record. Sandy affected the East Coast from Florida to Maine,. The hurricane also impacted states as far inland as West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana, according to FEMA.

Special thanks to Warhammer’s Wife proofreading this story before publication to make certain there were no misspellings, grammatical errors or other embarrassing mistakes and/or typos. Follow Warhammer on Twitter @Real_Warhammer. Also follow Warhammer on TruthSocial at @Real_Warhammer