The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog

Gutting Government Oversight: The Steve Kelman Ideology

In a recent op-ed, called "The IG Ideology," Harvard Kennedy School of Government Professor Steve Kelman takes a broad swipe at the federal government's Inspectors General (IGs). He unfairly attacks them for doing exactly what they're supposed to do – that is, to highlight agency mismanagement and billions of dollars in waste and fraud. He even goes so far as to blame the IGs for creating a culture that “demoralizes civil servants.”

While Mr. Kelman is correct in saying there is a culture within the federal government that demoralizes our public officials, he's not correct in blaming the IGs. Over the past several decades, the government's priorities have been corrupted, changing from acting in the public's interest to acting in its contractors' interest. It is this insidious change that has most demoralized those in the government who still try to work for the public good.

The world of federal procurement reflects the government’s shift in priority.

In fact, changes within the federal procurement system went a long way to hasten that shift. As one of the government's ranking procurement officials in the 1990s, Mr. Kelman led the acquisition reform movement, which was intended to make government more efficient. As it turns out, the reforms weren't reforms at all – they were boons to contractors and have created a target-rich environment for IGs. The changes to procurement law so undermined taxpayer protections that, as many IG inspections are revealing, the contracting system is now rife with waste and abuse. The system lacks real transparency and accountability, and freezes out many smaller firms through extraordinarily weak competition requirements. And some contracting practices, once considered to be unlawful, are now business as usual.

Also promoting the shift in the government’s priorities is the revolving door between the government and its contractors. The benefits of employment or board membership with contractors have become a siren song for a growing number of federal officials who oversee those contractors. The officials who succumb to the lure frequently end up, whether consciously or not, brokering deals for their potential future employers – often at the expense of the taxpayer.

Ironically, Mr. Kelman is himself an example of the revolving door. As he disclosed in his op-ed, he is a registered lobbyist for government contractors. What he did not note is that he also serves on the board of GTSI, a billion-dollar-a-year government contractor. Just a year ago, the Small Business Administration IG recommended that GTSI be debarred from receiving federal contracts (pdf). Small wonder he has it in for IGs.

In general, there seems to be a misconception about what IGs are supposed, or are not supposed, to do. According to the IG Act of 1978, the law that established the Inspector General function, IGs are supposed to investigate possible wrongdoing and, when they find it, expose it. Period. Among the numerous abuses brought to light by IGs and other auditors are price gouging and cronyism in Iraq contracting – the possibility of which Mr. Kelman ridiculed in an earlier op-ed [“No ‘Cronyism’ in Iraq,” Washington Post, Nov. 6, 2003, Page A33]; the C-130J cargo plane contract that, had it not been for the IG’s and Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) work on the issue, would have cost the taxpayers an additional $168 million; the numerous debacles in the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort; and the contract for the US VISIT border security system (pdf) that has cost $1 billion and still does not work.

Rather than attacking the IGs, we should be fixing the broken contracting system that is creating so much work for them. Because of acquisition reform, IGs and other government auditors are fighting an uphill battle: they now have fewer tools to combat contract overpricing and limited access to contractor cost data, while still trying to oversee spending that has doubled since 2000. There are nearly a dozen bills currently working their way through Congress that attempt to restore transparency, accountability, and competition – most notably Chairman Henry Waxman's (D-Calif.) “Accountability in Contracting Act,” which passed the House by a large margin. Congress should give the IGs a hand by cleaning up the contracting system and, more broadly, by re-establishing an arms-length relationship between the government and the companies with which it does business.

-- Danielle Brian

Will Congress Slow Their Revolving Door Next Month?

If there’s one area of legislation that members of Congress have more difficulty with than any other, it’s creating stringent ethics rules to govern their own actions. Yet according to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Caucus chair Rahm Emanuel, their long-awaited ethics and lobbying reform package will make it through the House by the end of May.

WaPo blogger Paul Kane commented earlier this week on the proposed reforms:

Emanuel said the House would have a bill on the floor "in short order," possibly next week. There are still several issues that members are resisting: forcing firms to reveal how much in campaign donations they bundle from their lobbyists and clients to lawmakers; disclosure by public relations firms of grassroots efforts at lobbying that doesn't involve direct contact with Congress and therefore isn't currently disclosed; and an extension of the cooling-off period forbidding members and senior staff from lobbying on Capitol Hill.

Ironically, the main sources of disagreement in the House cited by Kane are the same provisions that public interest groups have agreed are necessary. According to CQ Today, new revolving-door restrictions in particular may face House attempts to weaken them, despite the fact that the Senate has already approved tough language in January:

The Senate has endorsed rules that would require members of Congress to wait two years before directly lobbying their former colleagues, and House leaders have indicated their support. But the Senate bill went further, prohibiting any lobbying “activity,” meaning that former members would not be able to even help lobbying shops influence legislation during the period in which they were refraining from making contacts themselves.

Some House members have balked at the stricter definition, saying it would prevent them from being employed at a lobbying office or law firm even if they did no direct lobbying, according to Democratic House aides involved with the legislation. “Members are pushing back on this . . . It may not be in the House bill,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the watchdog group Public Citizen, who has helped Democratic staff craft the legislation.

Nevertheless, stricter revolving-door rules are much needed, as emphasized this week by former House committee staffer Mark Zachares’s guilty plea for corruption related to the Abramoff scandal. Public Citizen’s online site dedicated to congressional ethics reform also provides information (pdf) on why the new revolving-door provisions are necessary.

Assuming that the Democratic majority lives up to its promises, voters will be able to breathe a sigh of relief on Memorial Day and reflect on how the “culture of corruption” days in Congress are over. Now let’s see it happen.

-- John Pruett

 

GSA Inspector General: Touche, Ms. Doan

In December of last year, WaPo recorded a quote from General Services Administration head Lurita Doan remarking on the GSA’s Office of Inspector General. She stated, “There are two kinds of terrorism in the U.S.: the external kind and internally, the IGs have terrorized the regional administrators.”

At the time, Doan’s remark comparing the IG’s office to terrorists seemed not only shocking and extreme, but also uncalled for, a little bit left field. Yet hindsight has since revealed that Doan knows a threat when she sees one. The IG has since revealed that Doan herself is the subject of a conflict-of-interest investigation.

Doan’s alleged wrongdoing is a classic example of reverse revolving door corruption. Before joining the GSA, Doan had personal and professional dealings with Public Affairs Group, Inc. President Edie Fraser. After becoming head of GSA, Doan personally awarded a $20,000 no-bid contract to Public Affairs Group for public relations services. After review by GSA contracting officials, it was determined that the contract violated regulations and so it was terminated.

What’s Doan’s justification for her actions? Her comments on procurement rules for a March 12 FCW article sheds some light:

Doan said she doesn’t discount the importance of compliance with contracting rules. At the same time, she added, “we don’t want to spend so much time on being compliant that we don’t get it done.”

Apparently Doan views federal regulations as just one factor to consider when making contracting decisions. Luckily for the public, the IG doesn’t take the issue as lightly. It also looks like a few congressmen don’t either. Just this week, Senators Byron Dorgan and Ron Wyden, responding to the conflict-of-interest charges and also her possible violations of the Hatch Act, called for Doan’s resignation.

-- John Pruett

Lessons from Deepwater

Last week the US Coast Guard announced that it would takeover management of the $24 billion dollar Deepwater program designed to refit the Coast Guard’s fleet after it was discovered that Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS), the Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman partnership, had seriously fumbled the contract.

This week the Deepwater program faces a new problem – namely, the Coast Guard’s ability to effectively manage it. According to a UPI article:

Rand recommended switching control of Deepwater to the Coast Guard. But the think tank did not count on the problems of converting the Coast Guard's 110-foot cutters into 123-footers. The extensions were made to accommodate new equipment and mixed crews, but the eight stretched-out vessels were declared potentially unsafe in high seas and recommended for scrap.

Deepwater had been designed to give Integrated Coast Guard Systems, a joint venture of Lockheed-Northrop Grumman, a high degree of autonomy in running the program. But the Coast Guard is not the U.S. Navy; it is a small service involved in a major overhaul of ships, planes and complex electronics and communications. The Coast Guard does not have the Pentagon's vast pool of contracting officers, accountants and engineers to check the work turned in by ICGS.

The result, witnesses told Congress, was a lack of supervision in which problems were not caught by the Coast Guard.

For starters, the decision to hand over such inherently governmental functions like contract oversight and management should have raised red flags long before now. Yet, as the above quote points out, the Coast Guard lacked the necessary means to accomplish this government function, and thus sought to cut costs by relying on the contractor. It's true that the Coast Guard doesn't have the same resources as the US Navy, but the Pentagon has certainly had its own share of massive screw-ups, most notably with reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

DHS Keeping the GAO at Bay

At a hearing earlier today, Norman Rabkin of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress' investigative arm, testified (pdf) on GAO's problems accessing information at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a part of the government that desperately needs solid oversight.  From his testimony:

Unlike those of many other executive agencies, DHS’s processes for working with us includes extensive coordination among program officials, liaisons, and attorneys at the departmental and component levels and centralized control for all incoming GAO requests for information and outgoing documents. In an April 2004 directive on GAO relations, DHS established a department liaison to manage its relationship with us.
...
At most federal agencies and in some cases within DHS, we obtain the information we need directly from program officials, often on the spot or very soon after making the request.
...
...the process used in most of our interactions with DHS is layered and timeconsuming. As discussed earlier, we are asked to submit each request for documents to the component coordinator rather than directly to program officials even if we have already met with these officials. Also as mentioned earlier, the component coordinator often refers our request to component counsel. And the Assistant General Counsel for General Law in DHS’s General Counsel’s office may become involved. The result is that we often wait for months for information that in many cases could be provided immediately. In some cases, DHS does not furnish information until our review is nearly finished, greatly impeding our ability to provide a full and timely perspective on the program under review.

Rabkin then outlined two examples where DHS has hindered or delayed GAO research.  He also said that GAO has "experienced delays with DHS components that include CBP, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), FEMA, and TSA on different types of work such as information sharing, immigration, emergency preparedness in primary and secondary schools, and accounting systems."

Earlier this year, my colleague John Pruett pointed out two hearings in February on this same issue where the following is adapted from.  In one hearing, Richard Skinner, Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and David Walker, Comptroller General with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to discuss management and contract problems within DHS. The particular programs under scrutiny were the Secure Border Initiative (SBI) and Deepwater, but the hearing also highlighted more fundamental concerns about contracting and transparency in the Department.

In his written testimony (pdf) for another hearing in the House Homeland Security Committee, Walker stated:

...DHS has not made its management or operational decisions transparent enough so that Congress can be sure it is effectively, efficiently, and economically using the billions of dollars in funding it receives annually, and is providing the levels of security called for in numerous legislative requirements and presidential directives. Our work for Congress assessing DHS’s operations has been significantly hampered by long delays in granting us access to program documents and officials, or by questioning our access to information needed to conduct our reviews. We are troubled by the impact that DHS’s processes and internal reviews have had on our ability to assess departmental programs and operations. Given the problems we have experienced in obtaining access to DHS information, it will be difficult for us to sustain the level of oversight that Congress has directed and that is needed to effectively oversee the department, including the level of oversight needed to assess DHS’s progress in addressing the existing transformation, integration, and programmatic challenges identified in this statement.

Walker’s testimony further relates that these sort of impediments were encountered during his investigation of the Deepwater and SBI programs. An article by Chris Strohm for the publication CongressDaily looks at one of the main individuals at DHS behind both Skinner and Walker’s investigative difficulties:

Walker said the problem is "systemic" and not the fault of any single individual. But he complained that GAO has had to go through the office of General Counsel Philip Perry [POGO note: who the day of the first of the two February hearings mentioned above, moved back to his old law firm Latham & Watkins]. Perry is married to Elizabeth Cheney, a former State Department official who is one of the vice president's two daughters. Walker said it is his understanding that people from Perry's office have to review documents GAO seeks before they are released and selectively sit in on interviews with department employees.

"When you have more lawyers in a meeting than program people, you know you got a problem. Something needs to be done about this," Walker said. "There needs to be an understanding that if the general counsel's office is going to get involved, it's clearly got to be the exception rather than the rule," he added. "Right now the system is structured to delay, delay, delay ... We haven't had a situation where they refuse information but it might take months to get it."

Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner said his investigations have also been hindered. "We're experiencing the same problem," said Skinner, who added his office is "oftentimes" told who they can interview and that it sometimes takes weeks to get documents.

The general counsel of an agency is meant to protect the integrity of the organization he works for, but not at the expense of accountability. It is possible that Perry, son-in-law of the Vice President, learned a thing or two from Cheney in keeping the GAO at bay.

-- Nick Schwellenbach

Feith's Earmark?

The third largest defense earmark in fiscal year 2005, according to POGO's analysis of the White House's 2005 earmark database, is a classified earmark for $90 million (listed in the unclassifed FY2005 Defense Appropriations report (page 351, line 116)) which went to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy's office, which was headed by Douglas Feith at the time. 

We have no idea what the earmark is for, though it seems odd that a Pentagon policy office would need an earmark.  If Feith's shop wanted more appropriations, the logical and most appropriate place to request funding would be in the President's budget request which is submitted to Congress, one would think.  Perhaps a member of Congress foisted this classified funding onto Feith's office.  We do not know.  Nor do we know what the earmark was for.  We do know that someone in the House of Representative rather than the Senate, originated the earmark for $85 million, but it was later bumped up to $90 million in conference.

I think it's worth noting the questionable involvement of Feith in some other matters.

The New York Times reported last week that "a spokeswoman for SAIC said the company was told to contract with Ms. Riza [Wolfowitz's girlfriend from the World Bank] by an official in the office of the under secretary of defense for policy, then headed by Douglas J. Feith."

Also, reported in 2004:

TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official—whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon—that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says "action" on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year.

Then there's the imbroglio with the Office of Special Plans.

Feith left in the summer of 2005, but during 2004 someone in the House of Representatives thought his office was deserving of some extra cash for the next fiscal year.  But for what?

-- Nick Schwellenbach

The Business of Environmental Protection

In a recent article from in Vanity Fair titled “Texas Chainsaw Management ," Robert F. Kennedy examines this Administration's frightening habit of giving away environmental protection jobs within all departments of the government to business insiders from the industries they have been tasked to regulate.  Citing many examples, including what he calls “the top 12,” which are listed below, Kennedy paints a harrowing picture of an executive branch more concerned with advocating business interests than fulfilling its fundamental job of protecting the citizenry and a civil service which has “entered government not to serve the public interest but rather to subvert the very laws they are charged with enforcing.”

It seems not even mother earth is safe from this administration’s agenda of using government for private gain, and it may be our children who may pay the price.

-- Caleb Rowe

FBI Proposes Deleting Whistleblower Files

Last week, MSNBC aired a fascinating piece – “All the President’s Missing Documents” on the many government documents which seem to disappear, including the recent White House emails regarding the Justice Department’s firing of U.S. Attorneys. Of course, readers of 1984 will remember that politically inconvenient government documents simply disappeared into the Memory Hole.

In that vein, we would like to thank a POGO reader (Ben) for drawing our attention to the fact that the FBI has filed a notice in the Federal Register seeking comment on its plan to change its retention records for whistleblower cases. The proposed timeline is as follows:

Retention and Disposal:     Temporary.

Transfer to the Washington National Records Center two years after closing.

Destroy six years after closing.

We’re not experts in government records retention, but this time line seems awfully short. If you agree, you can send in your comments for the Department of Justice on this Federal Register notice. If you know more about records retention for government personnel files or whistleblower files from other departments in the Executive Branch, please chime in here in the comments.

-- Beth Daley

Eloise Cobell to Finally Get Day in Court

More than 10 years after filing her first lawsuit seeking reform of the government’s Indian trust system, Eloise Cobell and 500,000 Native American beneficiaries will finally get their day in court under a ruling issued on Friday, April 20 by Judge James Robertson, according to Indianz.com. The Justice Department and the Department of Interior have engaged in years of dodge and delay in this class-action lawsuit filed by Cobell over billions of dollars owed to Native Americans in mineral royalties, grazing fees, and other revenues were mishandled or lost. A proposal from the government to settle the litigation for $7 billion has gone no where.

Three cheers to Cobell and her allies for her persistence in fighting this arduous battle.

-- Beth Daley

The Influence Dream-Team's Neverending Nightmare

Another Abramoff casualty has pled guilty, Mark Zachares. The AP's Pete Yost reports on a cozy relationship between Zachares and Abramoff. According to AP, Zachares would provide "Abramoff contact information for prospective businesses that would be affected by the creation of the Homeland Security Department" under a "'two-year plan' in which Abramoff would build a homeland security lobbying practice that Zachares ultimately would join." Zachares did this while working for House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for Chairman Don Young. Zachares is not the first aide connected to Don Young to be implicated in the ever-expanding Abramoff scandal. Duane Gibson also worked for Representative Young on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee but ended up as a deputy for Abramoff at his Greenberg Traurig lobbying firm. That sounds eerily familiar.

Gibson was part of the tight knit lobbying Abramoff team. James Grimaldi of the Washington Post noted in 2005 that "Members of that influence dream-team continue to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars as registered lobbyists, often lobbying for former Abramoff clients -- unimpeded by the taint of scandal and revelations of suspicious deal-making in the brash and sometimes salty e-mails exchanged with Abramoff." [Full disclosure: Gibson led a falacious House Resources Committee "investigation" into POGO following our defeat of legislation to prevent collection of fair market royalties for oil industry drilling on federal lands.]

-- Beth Daley

TIME Reports New CREM de Meth Revelations

You may remember that Jessica Quintana was the former Los Alamos National Laboratory contractor who brought hundreds of pages highly classified documents to her home where they were found in a methamphetamine drug lab bust. As if this wasn’t bad enough, we had been hearing on the grape vine that during her security clearance interview Quintana admitted that she had been using drugs within weeks before seeking the clearance. Today TIME Magazine has a blockbuster report on their website on this (she was doing drugs during the security screening) and a much more damaging revelation: namely that since 2001 some “35 cases involved drug use within the year prior to requesting a security clearance” and two other cases involved “indications of prior drug use within the month prior to the clearance being granted.”  According to TIME, those cases are not limited to Los Alamos, but extend to other Department of Energy locations.

Energy Secretary Sam Bodman testifies today (pdf) before the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee where he will undoubtedly have to answer for this. (Link to live hearing; Windows Media Player req'd)

By comparison, consider that my son had to take a drug test before he got a job to straighten ketchup bottles on the shelves at Target.

-- Danielle Brian

Call Your Senator in Support of Open Government

A bill entitled the “Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act” (S.223) that would require senators to file campaign finance forms electronically has hit a snag on its way to a Senate floor vote. In what Sen. Burr has called “a procedural matter within the Senate,” an anonymous Republican senator has placed a so-called “secret hold” on the bill, which effectively blocks it from debate. What’s the possible reason for this “procedural matter”? From The Hill:

“I assume they want to have a chance to offer an amendment,” Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said, quipping, “I don’t have any problem with electronic filing, but I’m not necessarily interested in making it easier for the press to do their work.”

There’s certainly nothing wrong with proposing amendments, yet Sen. Lott fails to explain why a secret hold is necessary in order to so. Moreover, the mere fact that the senator who placed the hold chose to remain anonymous raises questions about his or her true motives.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Feingold, had this to say in response:

I am disappointed that a Republican Senator has chosen to block my bill to require Senate campaign reports to be filed electronically. This bill has bipartisan support in the Senate and significant support around the country, from editorial boards to bloggers on both the left and the right. I am aware of no opposition to it at all. I do not understand why someone in this body would block a bill that simply brings the Senate filing process into the 21st century, and do so anonymously and without explanation.

As I discussed in a previous post, there is absolutely no reason why the Senate shouldn’t file campaign finance forms electronically. The House has already done so for roughly 10 years now, and not only does electronic filing allow for easier public access to information, but it also speeds up processing time and decreases costs.

Several open government organizations, including the Campaign Finance Institute and Sunlight Foundation, are now calling on voters to contact their senators and urge them to support the bill. As of this afternoon, 56 senators have stated that they did not place the hold.

-- John Pruett