The chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Tom Carper, D-Del., and ranking member Tom Coburn, R-Okla., have introduced a bill to eliminate some reporting requirements for the DHS inspector general.
IGs on average have about 30 percent of their workload mandated by Congress, but the DHS IG has about 70 percent mandated, reducing the amount of discretionary audits it can undertake in response to whistleblower complaints and otherwise.
The bill, S-2651, would repeal the DHS IG requirement to conduct an annual evaluation of the Cargo Inspection Targeting System and an annual review of Coast Guard performance, repeal a reporting requirement for an accounting of national drug control policy funds, and repeal a requirement to conduct an annual review of grants to states and high risk urban areas.
Those studies cost millions of dollars to carry out. The sponsors say the IG could still conduct similar oversight if it chose to. The effective data would be January 1, 2015.
