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If you haven't already seen it, I wanted to call your attention to our new guide to the ongoing drama surrounding Office of Special Counsel chief Scott Bloch and the various Bush administration officials he's investigated -- all while under investigation himself the whole time. If you're having as much trouble as I am keeping track of this web of still-developing controversies, it's a handy tool.

Yesterday, members of a House Appropriations subcommittee celebrated Tax Day by grilling new IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman about the agency's use of private debt collection agencies. IRS Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson reported early this year that the program has a "dismal return on investment." But that didn't stop the IRS from renewing its contracts with two debt collection firms last month.

Shulman pleaded ignorance of the whole issue, saying he's only been on the job for three weeks and needs more time to study it.

House members seem disinclined to give him that time. After Tuesday's hearing, the House voted 238-189 to prohibit the use of private firms for tax debt collection. “The collection of taxes is an inherently governmental function that should be restricted to properly trained and proficient IRS personnel,” said National Treasury Employees Union president Colleen M. Kelley after the vote.

Here's Bush administration management chief Clay Johnson, quoted in Steve Barr's Federal Diary column in the Washington Post, on the latest revelations of misuse of government charge cards:

"The vast majority of civilian employees, government employees, use the cards responsibly. At the same time, I would say there is abuse, and the goal is zero, and we need to make it zero."

Zero? Setting aside the issue of whether that's at all realistic, it strikes me that getting even close to such a goal would be a lot more expensive than simply setting tough controls and accepting some minimal level of abuse as unavoidable. I know the anecdotes about misuse of cards are irritating (and, at the same time, amusing) but eliminating them entirely seems like a very costly and labor-intensive endeavor. Why does that have to be the standard for an effective card program?

(Hat tip: IEC Journal.)

In an annual survey conducted by a think tank devoted to assessing privacy issues, the U.S. Postal Service is rated by Americans as the most trusted government agency -- for the fourth year in a row.

In the Ponemon Institute report, which assessed 74 federal agencies, the Postal Service earned a "privacy trust score" of 86 percent, up from 83 percent last year. The other top trusted agencies were the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, the Census Bureau and the National Institutes of Health.

The least trusted agencies were U.S. Customs and Border Protection (with a score of only 20 percent), the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Justice Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That's not a surprising list, given the hot-button nature of immigration issues, recent scandals at Justice and the super-secret mission of spy agencies.

Looks like the Federal Aviation Administration official who drew criticism over the agency's handling of missed safety inspections at Southwest Airlines is out of the safety business. Thomas Stuckey is no longer the director of flight standards for the five-state Southwest region, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown told the Associated Press. He's been reassigned to “an administrative position that doesn’t have safety oversight.”

Last night, the Associated Press moved a story over the wires that went out with this headline: "AP Impact: VA Workers Charge $2.6B on Gov't Credit Cards at Luxury Hotels, High-End Retailers."

That's a grabber, huh? And given the fact that we at Government Executive have reported on these kinds of abuses at various agencies in the past, it didn't come as that much of a surprise.

But it turns out there's quite a bit less here than meets the eye. First of all, the $2.6 billion figure refers to the total amount of spending by Veterans Affairs employees using federal purchase cards. And a detailed list of purchases obtained by the AP "reveals few outward signs of questionable spending, with hundreds of purchases at prosthetic, orthopedic and other medical supply stores," the story acknowledges.

Even the stuff the AP characterizes as questionable seems fairly routine -- and doesn't add up to a lot of dollars. It includes purchases totaling $8,471 at Sharper Image, a high-tech electronics specialty store, and less than $2,000 worth of spending at Franklin Covey, purveyor of high-end planners for executives. Those purchases could be perfectly legitimate, and they're certainly not on the order of using a government card to buy photos of Elvis or get DirecTV service.

The AP report also noted that "employees based at VA headquarters made credit card charges at Las Vegas casino hotels totaling $26,198." But the agency is building a VA hospital in the city and -- for better or for worse -- a lot of conferences and events are held there. So $26,000 doesn't seem like an outlandish amount of total spending in Vegas. And the details included in the piece on how the money was spent could be misleading. "One VA headquarters employee appears to have passed up casino hotels by booking at a Holiday Inn Express in Las Vegas for $787.75," the AP notes. But virtually all federal travelers stay at government rates under federal per diem policies, so who's to say if the Holiday Inn Express actually was cheaper?

On the whole, I'm with the folks over at the OhMyGov site on this one: The facts don't appear to support the tone of the article, and the righteous indignation drummed up by the usual-suspects list of members of Congress and heads of watchdog groups quoted in the story isn't terribly convincing.

By now I hope you've had a chance to see the story, broken by our sister site Nextgov.com yesterday, on the Census Bureau's decision to dramatically scale back its plans to use handheld computers to conduct the 2010 census. That was followed by a report on the grilling Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez took at the hands of a House Appropriations subcommittee about the move.

In case you didn't see this coming, I would point you to some of the work that Allan Holmes and the members of the team he has assembled at Nextgov have done on this issue over the past several months.

Allan got the ball rolling last summer with a "On the Brink," a piece in Government Executive that noted that the Census Bureau's leap of faith with handhelds "sends shivers down the spines of risk management experts."

Since then he, Gautham Nagesh and Jill Aitoro have followed up with a series of stories leading up to yesterday's blockbuster:

• GAO cites cost, schedule risks in IT projects supporting census (Oct. 10, 2007)


• GAO: Delays in systems testing put 2010 census at risk (Dec. 12, 2007)


• Census program to use handheld computers said to be in 'serious trouble' (Jan. 2, 2008)


• Census Bureau facing huge cost increase, possible delays in 2010 effort (March 5, 2008)

The folks over at the Merit Systems Protection Board might want to take a little closer look at who's in charge up on Capitol Hill these days. The agency routinely sends its research reports to Congress and the White House, and the recent ones (here's one example) have come with cover letters addressed to the following people: the President, the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

That's all well and good, but then the letters begin:

"Dear Sirs:"

I'm not sure how much House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., likes being addressed as "sir."

For those of you who are not big fans of congressional oversight, EPA's Marcus Peacock has a blog post today you might want to check out: "Why Hearings Are Good."

Are you a government financial professional? If so, the Association of Government Accountants is interested in your opinions. The association is conducting an online survey on key issues facing the financial management community. Those include the performance of agency financial services and reporting and the impact of continuing resolutions on operations and support services.

This just in from my colleagues over at CongressDaily:

House Republican sources said this afternoon that Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., has decided to retire, creating yet another open seat for Republicans to defend and setting off a shuffle on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where Davis is ranking member. Davis' announcement, coupled with the retirement of Rep. Ron Lewis, R-Ky., and Missouri GOP Rep. Kenny Hulshof's decision Tuesday to run for governor, means there are 24 Republicans and 29 House members overall who are either retiring or running for higher office.

U.S. Comptroller General David Walker was the featured speaker at Government Executive's Leadership Breakfast this morning, in what could be called an unofficial stop on his Fiscal Wake-Up Tour. (For full details on Walker's presentation about the impending fiscal crisis, see this GAO publication.)

In addition to plugging his appearance in a new documentary, I.O.U.S.A., which played last week at the Sundance Film Festival, Walker offered a few other observations:

• On the lack of attention to the country's looming fiscal problem: "If it was well understood, people would do something about it."


• On the political process: "Congress is a committee, and you can't run a country by committee. We're a long way from what the Founding Fathers intended."


• On the need for reengineering federal programs: "Government in many cases is based on conditions that existed from the 1940s to the 1960s."


• On oversight of federal operations: "The problem in government is not fraud, but waste. It's huge, and getting bigger."

The White House and members of the Senate are still at odds over legislation that is designed to strengthen federal inspectors general. The bill, CongressDaily noted yesterday, "aims to increase the independence of IGs through measures such as requiring notification of Congress 30 days before an IG is removed and mandating that all have their own legal counsel instead of using agency lawyers."

Umm, the senators might want to look at how well that provision about legal counsel is working out at the General Services Administration.

The Justice Department announced Thursday that Dessie Ruth Nelson, 65, of Oakland, Calif., a former longtime employee of the General Services Administration, had pleaded guilty to accepting more than $100,000 in bribes from a firm providing security to federal buildings in return for awarding the company three federal contracts worth more than $130 million.

In exchange for steering contracts to Holiday International Security Inc. (which later changed its name to USProtect Corp.) Nelson received, among other things, a shopping bag filled with $35,000 in cash, an envelope containing $10,000, and a $7,000 Caribbean cruise.

Nelson's case was pursued by Justice's Procurement Fraud Task Force, which is chaired by Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher and includes representatives from U.S. Attorneys' Offices, the FBI, agency inspector general offices, and other federal law enforcement agencies.

My post earlier this week about Stephen Goldsmith's essay on the subject of inherently governmental functions is certainly generating a lot of debate. By the way, in that post, I was remiss in not pointing out that GovExec's own Robert Brodsky explored this subject in some depth in the Sept. 1, 2007 issue of the magazine.

The Transportation Department inspector general is launching an investigation of working conditions for Chicago-area air traffic controllers, the Associated Press reports. Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., requested the study after a Government Accountability Office report showed that O’Hare International Airport had the second-highest number of near-collisions on runways from 2001 to 2006.

How important is the distinction between "must" and "should"? In the world of federal auditing standards, apparently it's really important -- so important that it took the Government Accountability Office 93 pages to spell it out.

The folks over at the editorial page of the Washington Times are disappointed in the recently unveiled Office of Management and Budget Web site containing data on federal contracts, grants and loans, USAspending.gov.

It's not that the data presented on the site isn't useful. USAspending.gov provides "real insight into government's operations," the paper's editorial writers say. They also laud "the ease with which ordinary Internet users can ask questions, begin searches and find information."

So what's the problem? More detailed data would be nice, the paper says. And then comes the real issue: "Nor are $700 hammers and new "Bridges to Nowhere" easily discoverable on this site, we're sorry to report."

At the end of the day, it's all about the horror stories, isn't it?

Interested in reading the latest federal ethics horror stories? The Defense Department's Standards of Conduct Office has updated its "Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure." (I wrote about the encyclopedia earlier this year.)

You can download the new version (it's a Microsoft Word document) here, or just get the latest updates here.

Some of the new entries:

• Affair with Assistant Leads to Employee Removal


• One Happy Family Spends Time Together in Jail


• Stealing Isn’t the Only Way to Misuse a Government Issued Credit Card


• Federal Employee Stole Credit Card Numbers to Hire Prostitutes (more on that here)


• Boyfriends Can Be Very Expensive For Employees Who Steal Funds


• Law Enforcement Official Fired for Landing Government Helicopter at His Daughter’s School


• 29-Year Veteran of the VA Loses Job Over Dirty Emails


• Stopping at the Base Eatery Not an “Official Visit”

(Hat tip: IEC Journal)

Memo to State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard: When a report by congressional Republicans who are trying to defend you against charges of political bias concludes that you have "an extraordinarily abusive management style," a "a poor regard for government workers," and that you'll "give anybody, any time, anywhere, a hard time," it might be time to rethink whether leading a very important federal operation is the right job for you.

Interesting juxtaposition of stories on our home page today. First, Jill Aitoro uncovers the story of two more information technology vendors who have quietly dropped their General Services Administration schedule contracts, one of them openly citing "unreasonable demands" by the agency's inspector general.

At the same time, though, CongressDaily's Dan Friedman reports that a bipartisan group of senators are concerned about IGs who they say "work too closely with agency leaders or succumb to political pressure from the Bush administration." They're pushing a bill aimed at making IGs more independent by, among other things, prohibiting them from accepting bonuses from agency heads and reducing the control of agencies over IG pay.

Yikes! The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum can't account for a whopping 80,000 of the 100,000 items it is supposed to have in its possession. The National Archives inspector general says a "near universal" breakdown in security left the facility vulnerable to theft from insiders.

The finding that Reagan's library was so poorly run, the paper reported, "may mortify fans of the late president, who often inveighed against government inefficiency."

The Center for Investigative Reporting and Salon have teamed up on a new report arguing that "federal whistleblowers almost never receive legal protection after they take action."

Among the alleged reprisals detailed:

• Joseph D. Whitson Jr. was a civilian chemist in the Air Force who spoke out about superiors falsifying drug test results. His desk was moved to a room in the basement and his job duties stripped.

• Vernie Gee Sr. was an agricultural inspector who sounded the alarm about tainted meat in the U.S. food supply and inspectors taking bribes from slaughterhouses. Gee was beaten up by a plant worker during an inspection -- and then reprimanded by superiors for fighting.
• George Randall Taylor, a chief of police at a Navy base in Bermuda, exposed coverups of rapes on the base. He was then forced into a psychiatric hospital.
• Before Teresa Chambers was fired from the Park Police, she found used condoms on her car, and someone pepper-sprayed her office door.

Of course, the report also notes that recent whistleblower cases "included one in which an employee sought protection after reporting missing candy bars at a government commissary. In another case, a worker complained about colleagues using a drinking fountain as a spittoon. One government worker was discovered by investigators to have fabricated his entire complaint. Most such cases, however, are weeded out of the system."

My favorite part, though, was the video highlighting the efforts of one of the pioneers of whistleblower protection legislation: Sen. Richard M. Nixon.

This is the time of the presidential election cycle when candidates from both parties are out there letting Americans know how they would exercise the levers of power if elected. New Mexico governor and Democratic candidate Bill Richardson made one of his priorities clear last Friday: finding out what really happened in Roswell, N.M. in 1947. Of course, many UFO buffs think they know exactly what happened: an alien spacecraft landed, the U.S. military took possession of it, and has been covering up the incident ever since.

Richardson seems to share the belief that the feds aren't telling the whole truth about the matter.
"I've been in government a long time," he said at a town hall meeting. "I've been in the Cabinet, I've been in the Congress and I've always felt that the government doesn't tell the truth as much as it should on a lot of issues."

"When I was in Congress," Richardson added, "I said (to the) Department of Defense ... 'What is the data? What is the data you have?' " When he was told the details were classified, "That ticked me off," he said.

"What do you want me to do?" Richardson asked an alien enthusiast at the meeting. "You want me to open up all those files? I'll work with you on that."

By the way, this isn't the only recent alien-related federal news. Wired Science reports that NASA has agreed to search its files for documents related to a mysterious fireball that crashed near Kecksburg, Pa., on Dec. 9, 1965.

(Hat tip: Carpetbagger Report, via Danger Room.)

He's hinted at it before, but Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., made it official Thursday. The Hill reports that Davis has announced he 's not running for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring GOPer John Warner next year.

Davis, the highly influential ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, didn't say whether he would run for reelection to his House seat.

Columnist/funnyman Dave Barry -- who's never been a big fan of the federal government -- chimes in this week with a piece on efforts to audit federal finances. Here's his reaction to reports that agencies can't account for billions of dollars in federal spending:

When you’re sucking in and spewing out money as fast as the federal government, you have to expect that here and there a billion dollars is going to fall between the cracks. I bet if federal employees took just a few minutes out of their work schedules to look around, they would quickly find a lot of this so-called “lost” money.

FIRST FEDERAL EMPLOYEE: OK, I’ll just check behind the cushions of this federal employee’s lounge sofa here and ... Hey, here’s some! Looks like a total of, let me see, two ... three ... four ... Wow! It’s $17 million!

SECOND FEDERAL EMPLOYEE: So THAT’S what happened to it!

We haven't heard much lately about the ongoing investigations into political briefings by White House staffers at federal agencies, but that doesn't mean they've faded into history. In fact, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., has apparently succeeded in getting House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to expand the panel's probe into the briefings to include looking into whether similar sessions were held during the Clinton administration.

Here's an e-mail from David Marin, the committee's Republican staff director, on the situation:

All-

In a letter today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman agreed with a request made earlier this year by Ranking Member Tom Davis that the Committee “would benefit from requesting copies of any political briefings that the Office of Political Affairs in the Clinton Administration may have given to federal agencies.”

Davis had suggested that the Committee seek Clinton Administration documents from the National Archives to help the Committee “better understand the practices of political officials in the previous administration…to provide bipartisan historical context.” Chairman Waxman also agreed today to support Davis’ request for information on any legal guidance that the Clinton Administration’s White House Counsel may have provided to the Office of Political Affairs about the political presentations.

Davis today said, “I am pleased Chairman Waxman agrees that for the good of this investigation and the good of the Committee, a little ‘compare and contrast’ is needed if we’re to fully understand how the White House political affairs shop operates, whether it’s under President Bush or under President Clinton. The investigation was suffering from a lack of historical context, making it appear more partisan than constructive.”

Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Tom Davis, R-Va. -- the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee -- have had their share of run-ins lately over the panel's agenda. But they've found one thing to agree on: the committee's ongoing interest in the issue of steroids in professional sports.

This time, ESPN the Magazine reports, the "sport" in question is professional wrestling. Waxman and Davis have written a letter to Vince McMahon, head of World Wrestling Entertainment, demanding that he provide records about the the organization's steroids testing policies.

"WWE has a responsibility to do everything possible to eliminate the use of performance-enhancing drugs -- or the perception of such use -- by its wrestlers," the lawmakers wrote.

What?! Pro wrestlers using steroids? The next thing you're going to tell me is that the matches are fixed. This is just shocking.

The city of White Plains, N.Y., is not happy with the Marine Corps -- specifically, with Marine recruiters who have racked up more than $90,000 in unpaid parking tickets dating back to 2001. Now, the Journal-News reports, the city's parking commissioner, Albert Moroni, has impounded one of the Marine recruiters' cars and is threatening to sell it at auction if the service doesn't pay its fines. Moroni worked with the General Services Administration to determine exactly which federal organizations were responsible for serial parking violations in the city. And it turned out that the Marines do seem to have a problem. On the list of scofflaws, vehicles with diplomatic plates were a distant second to the Marines, with $5,910 in unpaid tickets, followed by Army recruiters, with $3,575 in pending fines.

Still, GSA has apparently warned Moroni that if he follows through on his threat to sell off a federal vehicle, he might receive a visit from the FBI.

Here's the Associated Press on the flap around massive delays at the State Department in processing passport applications:

The current passport mess is rare among government foul-ups: A top federal official has publicly taken the blame and expressed regret.

"Over the past several months, many travelers who applied for a passport did not receive their document in time for their planned travel. I deeply regret that," says Assistant Secretary of State Maura Harty, who is in charge of passports for U.S. citizens. "I accept complete responsibility for this."

But is it really "rare" that government officials accept such blame? As I wrote a few years ago, there is actually no shortage in government of people who take "full responsibility" for bad things that happen. In fact, they do it all the time. Donald Rumsfeld did it after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal came to light. President Bush did it after the failed federal Hurricane Katrina response. (And Louisiana's Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, did it relative to the state response.)

What is lacking is actual consequences for failures. Meghan Daum, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, had a great line about this in reference to L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's recent acceptance of "full responsibility" for his relationship with Telemundo newscaster Mirthala Salinas:

The "full responsibility" phrase has been uttered with such astonishing frequency by people who mean precisely its opposite that it's become conversational filler, a throat-clearing noise so inconsequential that most listeners forget that they heard it as quickly as the speaker forgets that he said it.

I won't pass judgment on whether Maura Harty actually has "complete responsibility" for the passport delays. For all I know, many people and systems were to blame. But if she insists that it's her fault, then I have to ask, what are the consequences?

Freshman Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., wants more independence for inspectors general. She's introduced legislation that would mandate that IGs be appointed for seven-year terms and only be removable for cause. IGs also would have to have management and oversight experience, couldn't take bonuses from their agencies and would submit their budget requests directly to the Office of Management and Budget. (That looks like a shot at the General Services Administration's Lurita Doan, who got in a high-profile budget spat with her agency's IG last year.)

The bill echoes a measure introduced in the House by Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., last month.

NASA Inspector General Robert "Moose" Cobb said at a joint House-Senate hearing yesterday that he's going nowhere, despite calls for his resignation by members of Congress and associates who, the Washington Post reports, describe him as "abusive, vulgar, unprofessional and seemingly beholden to top management of the agency he oversees." Cobb has been the subject of 24 formal complaints and an ethics panel concluded earlier this year that he should be fired or otherwise punished.

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday asked the head of the General Services Administration to testify regarding statements she made during an investigation into potential violations of a law limiting political activity in the federal workplace.

In a letter to GSA Administrator Lurita Doan, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said he was concerned about her allegations that employees who testified about her statements at Jan. 26 meeting at GSA headquarters were biased and poor performers.

Waxman also said Doan may be asked other questions at the hearing relating to the veracity of her statements to the committee and to Office of Special Counsel investigators. Waxman asked Doan to appear on June 7 at 10 a.m.

“Government employees who cooperate with congressional and federal investigations perform a vital service to the nation,” Waxman said in the letter. “It would be a serious abuse if your statements were part of an effort to retaliate against these witnesses for cooperating with the Oversight Committee's investigation.”

A GSA spokeswoman said that the agency had just received the letter Thursday evening. She said that Doan will review it and respond to Congress.--Daniel Pulliam

Republicans and Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee agree on one thing, the Washington Post reports: that Commerce Department Inspector General Johnnie E. Frazier needs to back off while the panel investigates whether he misued travel funds, inappropriately gave selective bonuses to certain employees, and retaliated against whistleblowers. Committee members from both parties have sent a letter to Frazier saying that they have received "credible allegations" that IG office employees who have cooperated with the investigation have been threatened and retaliated against. "It is a violation of federal law to interfere with a congressional inquiry," the members noted.

The EPA inspector general has advised the agency to take employee wrongdoing more seriously, and improve on the average 200 days that it takes to initiate disciplinary actions when misconduct is found. Some of the EPA's actions that weren't tough enough, according to the IG: an oral admonishment to an employee who was absent without authorization for a total of more than 50 days, and a letter of reprimand issued to an employee who pled guilty in court to stealing a credit card from another agency and using it for personal purchases. EPA officials generally agreed with the IG’s recommendations.--Jenny Mandel

Inspectors general have long been the bane of many federal managers, with their withering audits and investigations into all manner of agency activities. But now some of them are finding out what it's like to be on the receiving end of an inquiry. The Project on Government Oversight has a rundown on all of the IGs who are currently under some form of investigation themselves.