IG’s Oversight and Clout Shrink under Obama

[Geee]

Daily Caller:

Two years after the departure of President George. W. Bush, the White House has still not appointed 12 of the mandated 69 agency Inspector Generals, and is leaving open slots at several scandal-plagued agencies, including the departments of justice, labor and urban development.

“I hadn’t known that,” said Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a Democrat-leaning group. “That’s troubling because the IGs are critical in combating waste, fraud and abuse,” she said

The 12 open slots is a jump from the fall of 2009, where there were seven open slots. The number of successful cases prosecuted by the IGs’ roughly 12,000 staff have also shrunk by 14 percent to 33 percent since late 2008.

“Independent inspectors general are needed to hold the federal bureaucracy accountable,” Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said in a statement to TheDC. “When a President leaves these watchdog positions open, sometimes for years, you have to question that administration’s commitment to good government,” said the statement from Grassley, who is a long-time advocate for greater use of IGs. He’s also the leading Republican on the Senate’s judiciary committee.

During George W. Bush’s terms, these IG offices were high-profile positions. Democratic legislators and affiliated groups used the IGs’ reports to attack the Republican administration. Media outlets also were eager uses of the reports, which ensured a series of politically debilitating media scandals. For example, Glenn Fine, the Justice Department’s IG, was lauded by many Democratic advocates for his investigations into the department’s management during Bush’s terms. Fine, who quit in January, “was great,” said Sloan. “He was so routinely aggressive and willing to buck the leadership of the department at any time to what was right,” she said.