The IG at HHS expects to start the new fiscal year with a staff reduced by16 percent, the IG at Education by 20 percent and the IG at Treasury 31 by percent. Image: Bob Korn/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffA group of Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has written to each department secretary, pressing them to “clarify how you will dutifully uphold our nation’s federal oversight and IG laws” amid significant staff cuts in many IG offices.
“Committee Democrats have learned that, as a result of the Trump Administration’s reckless efforts to drive federal workers from their jobs without assessing the potential harm to the American people, the federal government’s OIGs have lost hundreds of key personnel, including critical auditors, investigators, and senior leaders who were instrumental in fighting waste, fraud, abuse and corruption,” they wrote.
“The Trump Administration has also placed hiring freezes on federal agencies—including OIGs—and directed them to undertake mass reduction in force (RIF) initiatives, threatening to make these challenges worse,” the letter says. “Numerous OIGs have reported to Committee staff about alterations of work schedules, delays in agency responses to OIG requests, and recruitment and retention issues.”
It says for example that the IG at HHS expects to start the new fiscal year with a staff reduced by16 percent, the IG at Education by 20 percent and the IG at Treasury 31 by percent.
“The loss of experienced auditors, investigators, and other key staff, and simultaneous loss of timely access to agency information, risk creating a significant knowledge gap within each OIG—blind spots where investigative timelines are delayed, backlogs of pending cases grow, and agency fraud, waste, and abuse can go unchecked,” the letter says.
Those losses follow the firings of 18 IGs—about a quarter of the total—without providing the notice and rationale to Congress required by law, and nominations have been made for only nine of those positions, they added.
Their letter reminds the secretaries of “your statutory obligation to respect OIG independence and to provide timely compliance with all OIG requests, including unfettered access to requested data, information, and people, and full cooperation in all audits, reviews, and investigations.”
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