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North Carolina Sent $3.1 Billion in Coronavirus Relief Funds Before Verifying Spending
North Carolina received about $3.6 billion from the federal Coronavirus Relief Fund, the $150 billion the CARES Act set aside for state, local and tribal governments. By October 31, 2020, the state's Pandemic Recovery Office had distributed about $3.1 billion of it to state agencies, colleges, universities, local governments, hospitals and nonprofits.
The State Auditor found in May 2021 that the office did not independently verify that spending until November 2020, "after the majority of funds were already spent." Until then, all of the information it used for monitoring "was self-reported by recipients." The office said it had put distributing the money and helping recipients first. It also sent out the $3.1 billion without making sure recipients had objectives, goals or a way to measure progress. The auditor concluded that this created "an increased risk that recipients could have misused the funds without the misuse being detected and corrected timely."1
Notes
- North Carolina Office of the State Auditor, Oversight of Coronavirus Relief Funds, PER-2021-3005A, May 2021, pp. 2, 6, 7 and 13-15. ↩