Janet Rehnquist daughter of Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist
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Inquiries on Gun and Ousters Focus on Health Dept. Official
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 — Federal officials said today that they were investigating whether the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services had kept a gun in her office without authorization and whether she violated personnel rules by ousting career employees.
The examination of gun safety was requested by other federal law enforcement officials, who said the weapon of the official, Janet Rehnquist, had no trigger lock and was not stored in a gun safe, as required by her agency's rules.
The review of personnel practices was requested by Senators Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana.
Mr. Grassley said Ms. Rehnquist's dismissal, demotion or reassignment of 19 senior executives could "hinder the performance of an office that has a stellar reputation for fighting fraud, waste and abuse in federal health care programs."
The federal government spends more than $400 billion a year on the largest of those programs, Medicare and Medicaid, which provide health insurance for 70 million people who are elderly, disabled or poor.
Ms. Rehnquist began replacing personnel soon after she took office in August 2001. Several people who work for her, including a former executive assistant, Marcia J. Van Note, have told investigators that Ms. Rehnquist kept a pistol in a credenza or file cabinet in her office. They also said that she had a poster of a life-size human target, like ones at a firing range, on her office wall.
Many criminal investigators who work for inspectors general are allowed to carry firearms, under strict controls, but they must take training courses and be recertified every three months. A law enforcement official working on the investigation of Ms. Rehnquist's office said her job description "does not require or authorize her to carry a weapon."
Ms. Rehnquist, a former assistant United States attorney who is the daughter of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, refused to discuss the accusations. Kimberly L. Brandt, a spokeswoman for Ms. Rehnquist, said the inspector general had a gun fitted with a laser pointer because she wanted to see how to aim the gun as agents are trained to do. Ms. Brandt said she had not seen the gun, but believed it was "not fully operational."
More generally, Ms. Brandt said, Ms. Rehnquist wanted to know, "Why is it that we need to spend so much on training investigators in the use of firearms?"
Law enforcement officials who asked for the review said they feared that casual handling or mishandling of firearms at the department could jeopardize gun privileges of criminal investigators throughout the government.
Inspectors general at other federal agencies said they shared the concern of Mr. Grassley and Mr. Baucus about wholesale personnel changes in Ms. Rehnquist's office, described last week in The Federal Paper.
Among those who have been replaced are four deputy inspectors general with decades of experience: Thomas D. Roslewicz, chief of audit services; George F. Grob, chief of program evaluation and inspections since 1988; Michael F. Mangano, the No. 2 official in the office; and D. McCarty Thornton, chief counsel since 1990.
Some turnover is normal, but several inspectors general said the extent of these changes exceeded the norm.
In 1998 and 2000, Mr. Grob and Mr. Mangano received presidential awards given to a small number of federal employees who show "a relentless long-term commitment to excellence in public service." Ms. Rehnquist asked them to find other jobs in late September.
Administration, congressional officials investigating HHS inspector
By LAURA MECKLER, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (November 14, 2:46 p.m. PST) - Officials in the Bush administration and on Capitol Hill are investigating whether the Health and Human Services Department's inspector general kept an unauthorized gun in her office.
Prompted by agency whistle-blowers, investigators also are examining complaints that Janet Rehnquist, daughter of the William H. Rehnquist, chief justice of the United States, has pushed well-respected senior managers out of their jobs. Allegations of questionable travel, promotions and spending are being reviewed, too.
The gun issue is being examined by the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, an arm of the White House established to police inspectors general, said Judy Holtz, spokeswoman for inspector general's office. Given the investigation, Holtz said she could not comment further.
The matter is also under review by the Senate Finance Committee, which has heard about questionable practices from dozens of people who work for the inspector general's office. Among the allegations: Rehnquist, who is not authorized to have a weapon, kept a government-owned handgun in her office.
A third inquiry in Rehnquist is under way at the General Accounting Office. Congressional investigators have referred material on issues including personnel and the gun.
Congressional aides said they have heard from credible sources that Rehnquist improperly had an unloaded service-issued 9 mm handgun, though she is not licensed to carry it, as well as a poster in her office of a target, possibly used to practice aiming.
The inspector general is charged with ensuring that HHS programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and welfare, do not waste money or flout rules. The office conducts independent investigations, audits and evaluations.
Rehnquist was appointed by President Bush in August 2001; the position is considered nonpartisan.
In a letter to the GAO last month, Rehnquist said she welcomed the review. "I am confident that your findings will further illustrate our many successes," she wrote.
Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the incoming chairman of the Finance Committee, Max Baucus, D-Mont., and John Breaux, D-La., requested that the GAO do a complete management review. Grassley said he had heard "numerous allegations" from whistle-blowers in the inspector general's office.
Specifically, insiders have complained about 19 senior-level staff changes since Rehnquist took over, including the departure of all six deputy inspectors general. All were due to involuntary retirement and reassignments, Grassley said, adding that five of the six former deputies had 30 years or more of experience apiece.
Inquiry
explores role of politics in audit delay
Whistleblowers raise suspicion
that the delay of a federal audit of the state plan was tied to Gov. Bush's
re-election campaign.
By ALISA ULFERTS and MARY JACOBY
© St. Petersburg Times
published November 13, 2002
TALLAHASSEE -- A congressional committee wants to know whether politics are behind the delay of a federal audit of the state employees' pension fund.
Gov. Jeb Bush's administration asked for a delay because of recent staff changes, a spokeswoman said Tuesday, not to avoid damaging his re-election effort.
But Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, isn't so sure.
He has asked for an investigation into whether Health and Human Services inspector general Janet Rehnquist delayed the audit to avoid possible embarrassment to Bush, who was in a spirited re-election fight.
Grassley said Tuesday the audit delay is just one part of a federal inquiry into whether Rehnquist, daughter of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, has improperly infused politics into her administrative duties.
Bush spokeswoman Elizabeth Hirst said the governor's staff requested the delay because the director of the state agency that oversees pension funds was about to retire.
"It was appropriate that we had a delay," Hirst said.
Grassley asked the General Accounting Office to look into Rehnquist's operation in October after learning that she made 19 senior-level staff changes at HHS. Grassley called that number "exceptionally high."
In talking with the whistleblowers from HHS, Grassley learned of suspicions that Rehnquist had delayed the Florida audit to avoid the possibility of damaging Bush's re-election campaign.
"These allegations are very serious. They accuse the inspector general of a failure to perform her duties independently. I'm looking into these allegations to try to determine their accuracy," Grassley said in a statement Tuesday.
He asked the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, to determine whether the HHS staff changes eroded the office's mission to root out waste, fraud and abuse in federal health care programs.
Grassley, author of a federal whistleblower protection statute, is a longtime advocate of aggressive fraud investigation.
Judy Holtz, a spokeswoman for Rehnquist, said HHS employees triggered the audit by raising questions about the size of federal payments to the Florida pension fund.
Washington contributes to the roughly $90-billion fund whenever state or local employees do work for the federal government, such as projects funded through federal grants.
The audit was to begin in April but was delayed until August at the request of Florida officials, Holtz said. At issue were staff changes in Florida and a death in the family of a state employee who was critical to the audit, she said.
Holtz declined to identify the Florida state employee or the officials who asked for the delay. She said politics played no role in the decision to delay.
"The audit would not have been completed prior to the election even if it had started on time," Holtz said.
Pension fund audits take about nine months, she said.
Asked if Bush chief of staff Kathleen Shanahan, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, had asked Rehnquist for the delay, Holtz said, "We have no knowledge of that."
Hirst also was unable to say whether Shanahan actually asked for the delay.
Coleman Stipanovich, director of the agency that oversees the pension fund, said he began working with federal auditors in September.
He said his board didn't request a delay, and no one in his office thought the audit unusual.
"There were no yellow flags, no red flags. He didn't seem alarmed," Stipanovich recalled of his Sept. 20 interview with the HHS auditor.
"He said, 'We may come back and visit you and we may not,"' Stipanovich said.
News of the federal audit came as no surprise to the state's main employee union, which earlier this year hired its own experts to review the state pension fund after it lost about $300-million in Enron stock.
The union then wrote a report calling for additional, outside oversight of the pension fund.
Union spokesman Doug Martin doubted explanations that the delay was caused by personnel, not political, issues.
"There are few things in either Bush administration that are not of a political nature," Martin said.
In addition to the federal audit, the state pension fund is still involved in litigation with Alliance Capital, the fund manager that continued to purchase Enron stock for the state even after it became evident the company was faltering.
The state sued, hoping to recoup some of its losses. The suit is ongoing.
At least we'll get a few laughs
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
Wheee, it is coming down fast and hard out here.
The Wall Street Journal devotes some coverage to the interesting case of Janet Rehnquist, inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Rehnquist, daughter of the chief justice, is in hot water for politicizing her nonpartisan office and forcing out longtime career civil servants. This is the kind of thing that draws attention in Washington, but buried in the story, we find some interesting nuggets concerning Rehnquist's efforts to create a kinder, gentler IG department.
"The HHS office is responsible for safeguarding $450 billion-plus in annual spending, including Medicare and Medicaid, giving it a big role in policing health-care fraud. It annually makes cost-saving recommendations totaling billions of dollars, participates in hundreds of criminal prosecutions and bars thousands of entities from government work," reports the Journal.
The perfect job for some Republican who hates waste, fraud and abuse, right? Whoops, nope.
According to the Journal, "The new inspector general quickly put her stamp on the office, easing antifraud measures and instead emphasizing voluntary compliance. She scaled back the use of 'corporate integrity agreements,' in which health care companies found to have defrauded the government acquiesce in strict reporting conditions, saying she was 'concerned about their financial impact' on providers."
June Gibbs Brown, Rehnquist's predecessor in the office, says she has "weakened the system. It's really giving in to industry."
We have already tried letting industry police itself in Texas; it does not work.
According to his own environmental commission, George W. Bush's voluntary legislation for the 850 plants with more than 900,000 tons of pollution "grandfathered" out of the Texas Clean Air standards resulted in a grand total of 134 tons of pollution reductions. The voluntary law was such a failure that immediately after W. moved to Washington, the Texas Legislature replaced W.'s program with a mandatory one.
If the Republicans really think it is such a good idea not to have government regulation, let's try an experiment. Let's just take down all the traffic signs and signals and see what happens. Think voluntary compliance will make us safer? And there's not even a monetary incentive to drive unsafely.
The drug industry is salivating. No special interest campaigned harder for Republicans than the pharmaceutical firms, using phony front groups like "United Seniors." Wait'll you see the payoff for them: no price controls, no patent reform, and new laws to keep drugs that are sold at cut rates abroad from being resold in the United States at lower prices.
The Center for Responsive Politics reports that drug manufacturers are the top spending lobby. The industry has 400 lobbyists in Congress and spent nearly $97 million in 2000. As of June 30, the industry ranked ninth among more than 80 industry groups in direct contributions to congressional candidates and political parties: 73 percent of its $18.1 million spent to that date went to Republicans.
The Federal Communications Commission is contemplating new horrors. The FCC, headed by Colin Powell's son (didn't we used to think that hereditary power was a bad idea?), is fixing to repeal the last of the restrictions on how many media outlets can be owned by one company.
We know from repeated experience that this decreases competition in the field. The numbers are irrefutable, the facts are all there, so that's why Chairman Michael Powell is repealing the restrictions -- "to increase competition."
Gosh, maybe it will work this time. Why let experience and evidence bother us?
The litany of horrors, both completed and contemplated, could go on for days, but that is no excuse for giving up. In fact, it's much easier to stop bad legislation than it is to pass good legislation.
Playing defense in politics is much easier than playing offense. Smart Democrats in Congress and citizens raising Cain can derail most of this.
Just stay alert and involved, team. There is fun yet to be had. Indeed, given the number of blue-bellied nitwits who are about to become Senate committee chairs, we can look forward to a high degree of unintentional comedy.
Last edited: 16-05-2006