Read the full article here. Wall Street Journal
“A government accountability group filed a lawsuit on August 14 against the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for withholding records pertaining to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) and claiming that these records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.”
National Archives Refuses to Grant Records Concerning Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Claims Records Are Not Subject to FOIA
WASHINGTON – Government accountability group Cause of Action (CoA) filed a lawsuit on August 14 against the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for wrongfully withholding records pertaining to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) and claiming that these records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
“The FCIC was created to examine the causes of the financial and economic crisis in the United States, an issue that impacted all Americans,” said Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action. “At a time when the American public is still wondering what or who caused the financial crisis, the National Archives’ refusal to release these records keeps the American public in the dark.”
On October 3, 2011, CoA submitted a FOIA request to NARA for:
“[A]ll documents, including e-mail communications, memoranda, draft reports, and other relevant information and/or data contained in the records transfer of Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission documents stored at NARA to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at the U.S. House of Representatives.”
On December 1, 2011, NARA denied CoA’s FOIA request on the grounds that FCIC records are not “agency records” that must be disclosed pursuant to FOIA’s disclosure provisions and that the FCIC established a five-year restriction on public access to FCIC records.
CoA has appealed this FOIA denial, only to be shut out once again by NARA.
“NARA has been in possession of these documents since February of 2011, so to claim that these records are not Agency documents is an obfuscation of the truth,” stated Karen Olea, senior counsel at Cause of Action. “Cause of Action is committed to pursuing these documents so that the American public can know what went into the report that helped shaped the national discussion about the financial crisis.”
Read the full story here. Mother Jones
“Cause of Action, a Washington transparency watchdog that filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the FCIC documents last year, thinks the American public should not have to wait that long. Late Tuesday, the group sued NARA in federal court in Washington, DC, aiming to force the disclosure of thousands of pages of as-yet-unreleased documents.
“The FCIC had a big impact on the national discussion about what caused the financial crisis and all Americans have an interest in what really happened,” Mary Beth Hutchins, Cause of Action’s communications director, told Mother Jones. “We have an administration that from day one promised greater transparency in government, and what we’ve seen is that instead of having the public interest in mind, they’re bowing to the whims of this commission. It’s important that people be able to draw their own conclusions and judgments in addition to those the commission may have drawn from these documents.”
In the lawsuit, Cause of Action writes that NARA’s five-year restriction on the release of the documents (except for certain documents FCIC had pre-designated for release) is the same restriction that Phil Angelides, the commission’s Democratic chairman, advocated in a letter he sent to NARA in February 2011. But Cause of Action goes on to note that Peter Wallison, a Republican member of the commission, has said that he believes “the public should have access to all FCIC documents except those records provided to the FCIC on condition of confidentiality” and that he was “not even aware” of Angelides’ letter, “which expresses a position materially inconsistent with his own views.” (Hutchins said Wallison made those statements in phone conversations with Cause of Action’s legal team.)”
Faulty, Inaccurate, and Misleading Information Being Used to Shut Down California Family Business
WASHINGTON – Cause of Action, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting federal overreach, today filed a Data Quality Act complaint before the National Park Service for its intentional use of inaccurate, nontransparent, and deliberately misleading information in an attempt to deny a renewable permit to a California family business for use of national park territory.
When Kevin and Nancy Lunny’s permit, which allows their family business, Drakes Bay Oyster Company (DBOC), to farm oysters in the Point Reyes National Seashore, expires in November, over two dozen Californians will lose their jobs, and DBOC, which has been operating for many years, will be forced to shut down, thereby cutting off a substantial amount of the Bay Area’s commercial oyster supply.
“The National Park Service should not be allowed to get away with using bad data to justify closing a small business,” said Amber Abbasi, chief regulatory counsel at Cause of Action. “The evidence clearly shows how NPS, despite being called out by another federal agency and a credible member of the National Academy of Sciences, is using junk science to bully a family business into shutting down. We’ve sent a complaint to the NPS urging them to adhere to their own information-quality standards for the use of scientific information and correct the Final Environmental Impact Statement. NPS needs to make clear that a neutral scientific analysis reveals that DBOC does not adversely impact the environment in Drakes Estero.”
Cause of Action filed the Data Quality Act Complaint with the National Park Service (NPS) on behalf of the Lunnys as well as National Academy of Sciences member and former Evan Rauch Chair of Neurobiology at the University of California Dr. Corey Goodman, who found substantial inaccuracies in the National Park Service, Draft Environmental Impact Statement: Drakes Bay Oyster Company Special Use Permit (DEIS) and the March 2012 Atkins Peer Review Report put out by NPS.
Among the examples of inaccurate data NPS used against DBOC are the following:
NPS Claim: DBOC Causes a “Major Impact” to Soundscape.
Facts: NPS never took on-site measurements of noise generated by DBOC’s equipment. Instead, the DEIS used data from an obscure 1995 study, claiming this data was “representative” of noise generated by DBOC’s equipment in 2012.
NPS Claim: DBOC Causes an “Adverse Impact” to Harbor Seals, Birds and Bird Habitat, or Visitor Experience and Recreation.
Facts:
Additionally, at least one other federal agency has found that the NPS has misused science to advance the public policy goals of certain NPS employees:
By Dan Epstein
When reports surfaced that the General Services Administration had spent almost $1 million on a Las Vegas conference, Congress and the media demanded accountability. This blatant misuse of taxpayer funds is egregious enough on its own, but Cause of Action’s recent investigation shows that the spending spree could have been prevented and should have been stopped by those with authority to monitor the agency.
The Office of Government Ethics, designed to oversee ethics programs for all executive branch agencies, evaluated GSA when it was planning the 2010 Western Regional Conference. OGE’s June 2010 investigation ended with a letter praising GSA for its ethics policies and practices and described the agency’s ethics program as “employing a number of what OGE [considered] model practices.” Now, knowing what we do about the GSA’s spending at the time, those statements, even the entire investigation, are laughable, if not absurd.
Not only did OGE overlook GSA’s shopping spree, but it failed to address known risk factors that, if corrected, could have prevented the scandal. Those factors included the fact that there was no designated agency ethics officer at GSA for nearly four years. Also, there was evidence that an alternate DAEO was spending “less than 25 percent of her time on ethics-related duties.”
If the officers charged with monitoring ethics compliance are nonexistent or spending their time on other endeavors, why did OGE not intervene? Did OGE inform GSA Inspector General Brian Miller immediately? And, as House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa pointed out, why didn’t Miller inform Congress about the misfeasance earlier?
Lastly, of what value is OGE in overseeing agency ethics? Inefficiency in oversight by OGE is a classic example of how government bureaucracy fails to solve problems.
In response to our investigation, OGE told The Washington Post: “Laws and regulations regarding appropriations, travel, personnel and government contracts are administered by a variety of agencies and are outside OGE’s purview. OGE is not an investigatory agency but routinely works closely with inspectors general.” If OGE works closely with IGs, why didn’t OGE notify Miller on Nov. 2, 2010, about the problems with GSA instead of stating things were aboveboard?
Moreover, the notion that OGE doesn’t have investigatory authority over federal ethics is misleading, as OGE is statutorily mandated to conduct ethics audits. Indeed, given President Obama’s ethics pledge — his first act of office — perhaps pleading ignorance is the only appropriate response for an Office of Government Ethics in the time of the allegedly most transparent government in history.
OGE’s failure to deny our findings, and instead dodge responsibility, was expected by Cause of Action, especially after another Obama-era entity, the Council of Inspectors General for Integrity and Efficiency, similarly pleaded no-contest to responsibility for inspecting how the government responds to waste. Given the chorus of do-nothing bureaucrats, Cause of Action was pressured to send a letter to the president asking him to have the Office of Management and Budget consider whether OGE’s sole authority over the standards of ethical conduct should be transferred to the IGs, who have the resources and independence to address waste, fraud and mismanagement.
IGs have the infrastructure and personal knowledge of their respective agencies to properly audit violations of the Standards of Official Conduct, but they lack authority to enforce these standards. By transferring this authority from OGE, which is wasting taxpayer dollars performing perfunctory investigations, and shifting responsibility and oversight to the IGs, needless bureaucracy is cut away for one system, one set of expectations and one set of enforcement.
Dan Epstein is executive director of Cause of Action, a nonpartisan government accountability organization in Washington.
On August 6th, Cause of Action released a memorandum on our recent investigation into the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) and their failure to properly review the ethics program of the General Services Administration (GSA). Our investigation found that the OGE approved the ethics program of the GSA just three days after the now infamous Vegas conference that cost taxpayers $822,751. We also noted that there were risk factors brought to the attention of OGE officers about GSA prior to this 2010 ethics report.
The OGE response to our findings was a claim that they are somehow not responsible for overseeing the GSA misconduct. Specifically, an OGE representative claimed, “Laws and regulations regarding appropriations, travel, personnel, and government contracts are administered by a variety of agencies and are outside OGE’s purview. OGE is not an investigatory agency, but routinely works closely with Inspectors General”.
The OGE didn’t contest the validity of our fact-finding or analysis, but merely claimed they are somehow not responsible for detecting these particular violations. The fact that OGE doesn’t dispute our conclusions and seems to shift responsibility to the Inspector General provides support for our request that President Obama and the Office of Budget Management consider transferring ethics oversight duties to the agency inspectors general.
As the chart below notes, OGE is responsible for a wide variety of ethics-related matters. Clearly an audit of the GSA Ethics program should have taken into account the warnings that the OGE previously received. Furthermore, if the OGE is unable to truly discover these violations and are instead dependent on the Inspectors General, then would it not make sense to shift ethics oversight duties to the same Inspectors General that have the necessary investigative abilities? This is precisely what we asked in our letter to President Obama last Thursday.
Government agencies must be held accountable for their waste, fraud and mismanagement. It makes no sense to have a mechanism in place that allows for an agency to be given a clean bill of health for its ethics program just days after a huge ethics violation. Taxpayers deserve a more efficient system that will prevent this type of disaster in the future.