WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — In March of 2021, Newswatch 16 broke the story about the State Attorney General's investigation into the city of Williamsport's alleged misappropriation of transit funds from 2009 to 2019.
Now, the city confirms that the federal government has joined the investigation.
"The Federal Transit Administration has engaged a contractor to do a special review, as part of their financial management oversight, of the city of Williamsport and River Valley Transit," said Derek Slaughter, Williamsport mayor.
Newswatch 16 obtained this letter from the FTA notifying the city of the investigation. The letter dated November 28 was also sent to Todd Wright, the interim general manager at River Valley Transit Authority.
According to the letter, the federal investigation will dive into the spending of federal transit grant money during a period when the city was in control of River Valley Transit's funds.
Williamsport operated the bus system from its inception in 1969 up until this past summer.
"We are still working on the audits on the city side. We have had an audit done and almost a second one done with RVTA now. There has been a lot of comingling of money for what appears to be a significant amount of time," Slaughter said.
Newswatch 16 reached out to the FTA for a comment on the investigation. An FTA spokesperson confirmed the financial review of the transit system's spending. The River Valley Transit Authority has also not commented.
An audit of the transit system was done last year by RKL, an accounting and business consulting firm in Pennsylvania. It showed that millions of dollars of state and federal grants were misappropriated by Williamsport's transit system in just 2019 alone. Mayor Slaughter says any misspent money could take a toll on the city's funding.
"Expenses that we might have that do not adhere to those grant requirements of how you can appropriately spend state and federal grants, in this case, federal transit dollars, we could potentially owe those back," added Slaughter.
It is unclear how the grants were spent or mishandled. Slaughter says his administration is working to make sure it doesn't happen again. Earlier this year, Williamsport City Council voted unanimously in favor of creating an independent transit authority to relieve the city of handling finances for River Valley Transit.
"We continue to clean this up and get everything back in good standing. We put a lot of work into this obviously to make sure that since I took over that we are doing this the right way," Slaughter explained.
The letter from the Federal Transit Administration says interviews of city employees may take place soon.
The state's separate investigation is still ongoing.
At this time, no one has been charged with any wrongdoing.
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