The White House has announced the nomination of Walter M. Shaub, Jr. as director of the Office of Government Ethics; currently he is deputy general counsel at the agency, a position he has held since 2008.
He had been a supervisory attorney at OGE from 2006 to 2008, following two years in a private law practice where he focused on federal employment law. Previously, he was a staff attorney at several federal agencies, including OGE, VA and HHS. He earned a B.A. in history from James Madison University and a J.D. from American University Washington College of Law.
If confirmed, he would be taking over at a time when OGE is tasked, under the recently enacted Stock Act, with creating a government-wide database to hold publicly viewable financial disclosure forms filed by senior officials including several in career categories, in addition to the confidential forms filed by certain other employees, the large majority of them career federal workers. OGE has described that task—which the law envisions as being finished by the end of 2013—as a major undertaking potentially costing more than the agency’s recent annual budgets.
OGE also has been issuing guidance on several other changes in ethics policies contained in that law.
