Any misuse of Sandy aid by NJ Transit? Report won’t say

NJ Transit got nearly $1.3 billion in disaster aid for projects associated with superstorm Sandy, but if any of that public money was used improperly you won’t learn about it from a new report that was designed to answer that very question.

On Thursday, a day after NJ Transit approved an average fare increase of 9 percent, the first Integrity Oversight Monitoring report looking at NJ Transit was released. The monitoring reports are mandated by state law for every project using at least $5 million of Sandy aid.

However, unlike the other eight reports released, in the section where the investigation’s findings are supposed to be detailed the report only says: “Observations and recommendations have been provided to NJ Transit Internal Audit Department.”

In fact, the document is scant on any information: It’s less than one and a half pages, compared to five pages for the latest report on the $20-million Atlantic Highlands Municipal Harbor project, which has been rebuilt for nearly a year.

The report on NJ Transit from EisnerAmper, a global accounting firm with an office in Iselin, indicates that the review was for money obtained through the U.S. Federal Transit Administration’s Public Transportation Emergency Relief Program.

NJ Transit was awarded six grants for a total of $1,276,022,811 through that program, according to the FTA’s website.

The New Jersey Department of the Treasury, which supervises the reporting process, directed all questions to NJ Transit, which released a statement to the Asbury Park Press saying that no "fraud, waste and abuse" were found. NJ Transit declined to immediately release the report. EisnerAmper, which billed $88,000 for the review, did not return a message seeking comment.

NJ Transit was created by the New Jersey Public Transportation Act of 1979 and is supported financially by the state and federal governments.