A new report finds Rhode Island’s bus network is out of compliance with the state’s transparency law for quasi-public agencies, including failing to publish online reports for the last five years detailing payments to third-party contractors.
The R.I. Office of Internal Audit and Program Integrity found the R.I. Public Transit Authority lacked formalized project management standards in an 11-page report published Nov. 7. The report is required to happen every five years under the state law governing quasi-governmental agencies. The latest evaluation uncovered three major issues at the cash-strapped bus agency.
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A lack of management policy and standards
The report notes auditors had planned to review that RIPTA has not formally adopted procedures for initiating and managing capital and infrastructure projects. The only manuals provided to auditors were drafts.
“This lack of standardized monitoring practices and documentation increases the risk of project delays, cost overruns, inconsistent oversight, and noncompliance with state and federal expectations for capital project management,” Andrew Manca, the state’s chief of internal audits, wrote in the report.
The report offers no comment on the drafted policies, but agency spokesperson Cristy Raposo Perry said in an email Wednesday auditors found no issues with what they read.
“Our conversations with auditors have suggested that this draft policy is exactly the approach to be taken to comply with best practices,” she said.
The anticipated completion date for that formal adoption is Feb. 1, 2026, according to the audit report.
Inadequate project performance monitoring
Auditors reviewed financial documents for eight capital projects and found RIPTA had incomplete files.
“Documentation was missing or incomplete, including project charters, baseline schedules, performance metrics, budget tracking reports, and evidence of ongoing performance evaluation or corrective action,” Manca wrote.
The main way RIPTA keeps track of performance of its capital projects is via a dashboard maintained through Microsoft Excel, the report notes. While this dashboard is intended to serve as a centralized tool for oversight, auditors observed that it is “highly manual in nature” and contained several data gaps.
The report includes a response from RIPTA management stating that its project tracker spreadsheet will be updated to include “detailed logs,” along with automatically calculating performance indicators with checkboxes or completing key steps in a given project.
Incomplete and outdated contracting reports
RIPTA did not follow the state law requiring agencies to post online an annual report listing third-party vendors who provided at least $150,000 worth of services no later than Dec. 1.
That included the contractor responsible for the efficiency report that was initially due to state leaders in March but wasn’t completed until Aug. 1. Documentation on the agency’s use of public money and its performance was the major reason state leaders refused to fully fund all of RIPTA’s operations in the fiscal 2026 budget. A multimillion deficit forced the agency to enact sweeping service reductions impacting 46 of its 67 routes.
At the time of the audit, the most recent report available on RIPTA’s website was from the first quarter of 2020.
“No additional reports have been made available to the public in more than five years,” Manca wrote. “As a result, information regarding high-value contracts, vendor compensation, and outsourced services has not been available for public review, limiting the transparency intended by the statute.”
RIPTA has since added its last five years worth of contractor reports and promised to post all future ones on an annual basis, according to the report.
“This was an oversight,” Raposo Perry said, referring to the reports being absent online. She added that contracting reports have been submitted to the Secretary of State’s office on an annual basis.
Asked to comment on the overall findings of the report, Raposo Perry declined. “We cannot speak to decisions made in prior years,” she said.“However, under new leadership, we are prioritizing stronger policy frameworks to strengthen our business practices going forward.”
House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi and Senate President Valarie Lawson have yet to thoroughly review the audit report.
“But at first glance it appears that the agency is taking positive steps to remedy the project management policy and transparency compliance issues that had been identified,” they said in a joint statement to Rhode Island Current.
The legislative leaders added they will meet with RIPTA CEO Christopher Durand “in the coming weeks” to formally discuss the audit.
Christopher Shea is a staff writer for the Rhode Island Current.
