The Investigative Journal’s weekly survey of newly released federal audits, inspector general findings, state auditor reports, municipal reviews, and open-government data releases for the week ending April 13, 2026. All findings are drawn from the underlying public records; links go directly to source documents.
A heavy week for accountability journalism. The Government Accountability Office released new work on federal artificial-intelligence procurement, federal real estate disposals, graduate-researcher compensation, and technology transfer. State auditors in Missouri, Iowa, and North Carolina issued findings ranging from alleged misuse of transportation district taxes to repeat cash-handling failures in county offices. The Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general published an audit of construction-bidding procurement risk, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services formally released a new tranche of public data under the OPEN Government Data Act. Below, the records that matter this week — and the questions they leave open.
Federal Audits & GAO Reports
GAO Warns Federal Agencies Lack “Lessons Learned” Framework for AI Procurement
In GAO-26-107859, publicly released April 13, the Government Accountability Office examined how five federal agencies — including the Department of Defense, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and civilian departments — have been acquiring artificial-intelligence capabilities. Auditors found that all five agencies identified defining requirements and drafting contract terms as the central challenge. NGA officials told GAO that the Department of Defense’s flagship Project Maven was initially funded “without well-defined or documented requirements” because the agency prioritized speed over accountability.
GAO concluded that agencies should systematically collect and apply lessons learned to future AI procurements, warning that without clearly documented requirements, the government cannot hold vendors accountable for deliverables on Agile-style contracts. The report runs a performance audit from October 2024 through April 2026 and recommends new government-wide collection practices. For taxpayers, the stakes are considerable: DOD alone plans to invest more than $2.4 trillion in its costliest weapon programs over the coming years, many of which now incorporate AI components.
GSA Accelerates Federal Real Estate Sales — But Without Performance Goals
In GAO-26-107760, released April 9, GAO found that the General Services Administration has sold excess real property from October 2013 through November 2025 without clear performance measures linking those sales to savings for taxpayers. GSA is now rolling out what it calls an “accelerated disposal approach” intended to move faster on unneeded federal buildings. But GAO made three recommendations, most pointedly that GSA establish performance goals that tie directly to the accelerated approach and formally evaluate whether using private real estate brokers is cost-effective.
The report lands at a moment when the administration is pressing agencies to shrink the federal footprint. Records suggest that without goals and broker-performance evaluations, the public may have no reliable way to judge whether the faster pace is actually saving money or simply disposing of assets below market value.
GAO: No Complete Data on STEM Graduate Researcher Pay
Publicly released April 8, GAO-26-107757 reports that about 62,500 STEM graduate researchers and 22,000 STEM postdoctoral scholars received federal funding in academic year 2023. GAO’s analysis of university information placed median indirect compensation at roughly $62,200 for postdocs and $36,000 for graduate researchers in academic year 2025 — figures that have drawn sustained criticism from researchers and universities worried about the pipeline of American-trained scientists.
The report concludes that the National Science Foundation does not currently collect compensation data in a way that permits rigorous assessment of whether pay is adequate. GAO recommends NSF formally map the data gaps and finally execute a study of the U.S. graduate education system that Congress required by August 2023 but that remains unpublished.
GAO: Federal Inventors Retain Title, But Reporting Gaps Persist
Released April 13, GAO-26-107971 found that most recipients of federal research funding elect to keep title to their inventions — a longstanding Bayh-Dole Act right — but that compliance with reporting requirements is patchy. Stakeholders told GAO that a web-based system called iEdison could help, though some agencies said free-form submissions still produce incomplete records. In March 2026, the National Institute of Standards and Technology published a sample disclosure form that, if adopted, could tighten the federal invention-reporting record.
Inspector General Findings
EPA OIG: Procurement Risk in Construction Bidding
On April 8, the EPA Office of Inspector General published its Audit of Procurement Risk Related to Construction Bidding (Report No. 26-P-0022). The audit, conducted from April 2025 to January 2026, examined EPA contracting controls around construction-services bids. The report’s findings and recommendations are grounded in EPA’s own procurement files; readers should consult the PDF for the full list of recommendations and EPA’s agreed corrective actions.
HHS OIG Issues Favorable Advisory Opinion 26-06
On April 10, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General posted Advisory Opinion 26-06, which received a favorable determination. HHS OIG advisory opinions are binding only for the specific requestor, but they function as influential guidance across the health-care compliance community because they articulate how OIG would apply the Anti-Kickback Statute and related authorities to the facts presented. Compliance officers at hospitals, physician groups, and Medicare Advantage plans routinely mine these opinions for signals about enforcement priorities.
State Auditor Reports
Missouri: Arnold Officials Accused of Misleading Taxpayers
In a report released April 6, Missouri State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick found that officials in the City of Arnold and two affiliated transportation development districts (the Arnold Retail Corridor TDD and the Arnold Triangle TDD) engaged in what auditors described as conflicts of interest, misuse of district tax dollars, and “show votes” that misled residents about the city’s legal authority over district decisions. According to the state auditor’s findings, district sales-tax revenues were used to pay down city tax-increment-financing debt and to acquire property outside district boundaries — actions auditors say are not permitted under Missouri law.
The audit followed whistleblower complaints. Arnold officials dispute the characterization of the votes; the audit is a finding, not an adjudicated conclusion, and the allegations described here are drawn directly from the state auditor’s public report. Records suggest the audit will invite renewed scrutiny of how Missouri’s more than 200 transportation development districts are governed.
Iowa: Dickinson County Flagged for Repeat Cash-Handling Failures
On April 10, Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand’s office released findings identifying 11 financial failures inside Dickinson County government — five of them repeats from last year’s audit. Among the most serious findings: the offices of the sheriff, treasurer, and recorder each had a single individual controlling county cash from collection through recording, a textbook segregation-of-duties failure that sharply increases fraud risk.
The report covers county finances through June 2025. Auditors did not allege that specific fraud occurred; they flagged a control environment that would not detect it. County supervisors have acknowledged the findings publicly.
Dallas City Auditor Reviews Cultural Programs
On April 6, the Dallas Office of the City Auditor released an Audit of Cultural Programs examining the city’s primary cultural-support grant programs. The memo notifying the Mayor and City Council was signed April 10. As with all local performance audits, the value to the public lies in the granular findings — specific grantees, compliance gaps, and recommendations — documented in the audit package itself.
New York: Comptroller DiNapoli Releases Municipal & School Audits
New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli’s office announced a new batch of local-government and school-district audits this week. DiNapoli’s audits routinely surface misappropriation, improper procurement, and internal-control failures in school districts and towns across New York — and the weekly drops are among the most consistently underreported sources of local accountability journalism in the country.
FOIA Releases and Open Government Data
CMS Publishes New Data Assets Under OPEN Government Data Act
On April 6, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published a Federal Register notice of new public data assets released under the OPEN Government Data Act. The notice, signed on behalf of Administrator Mehmet Oz, reinforces CMS’s statutory obligation to make data available in open formats under open licenses, subject to privacy law. For investigative reporters, these quarterly asset releases are a reliable seam of raw material for tracking Medicare spending, provider enrollment, and program integrity trends.
IRS Releases Taxpayer Telephone-Services Records via FOIA
On April 10, Tax Notes reported that the Internal Revenue Service, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, released information on taxpayer telephone services. The disclosure lands alongside GAO-26-108116, published this spring, which concluded that the 2025 tax filing season’s staffing and performance were similar to prior years, but that IRS “lacks a plan to reduce its correspondence backlog” — a persistent finding that the newly released telephone-service records may help contextualize.
Worth Deeper TIJ Investigation
Three records this week warrant sustained follow-up. First, the GAO’s finding that federal AI procurements (GAO-26-107859) often proceed without documented requirements deserves a contract-by-contract review — particularly for Project Maven and its successors. Second, the Missouri auditor’s findings on Arnold’s TDDs invite a broader look at whether “show votes” and cross-district property acquisitions are a pattern in Missouri’s statewide TDD system. Third, the repeat findings in Dickinson County, Iowa — five controls still unfixed after last year’s audit — raise the obvious question of how many other Iowa counties have similar unresolved weaknesses.
TIJ will continue to track each of these records as agencies respond. As always, corrections and right-of-reply submissions can be sent to the editor; officials and entities named in underlying audits retain the right to contest findings through the processes their own statutes provide.
— Eduardo Bacci, The Investigative Journal