Concrete Masonry Promotion Program: Commerce Could Enhance Its Oversight Controls

Filed 10h ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Nationaal Archief · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

GAO reviewed the Concrete Masonry Checkoff program, a federally authorized, industry-funded effort that collected over $27 million in mandatory fees from 2023 to 2025 and spent nearly $15 million on research, education, and promotion for the concrete block industry. The board reported meeting or exceeding five of its 27 five-year performance goals and hitting at least 20% progress on ten more in year one. Commerce oversees the board but, per GAO, has no written procedures for approving the board's annual objectives and performance metrics.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Nobody is accusing the block industry of cooking the books here, the complaint is milder: Commerce just never wrote down how it checks the board's homework. That's the kind of gap that sounds small until the next administrator shows up with no instructions and a filing cabinet full of good intentions. Commerce had no comment, which for a two-page fix is its own small comment.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: Hot Swing · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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