Wednesday, November 13, 2002

Ms. Rehnquist is nuttier than a fruitcake..


Staffers on Mr. Grassley's committee also are looking into Ms. Rehnquist's possession of an unloaded gun to see if she violated local laws or department rules. Ms. Rehnquist for a while kept the gun in her office -- with a target depicting a menacing assailant affixed to the wall -- until her staff persuaded her to instead practice aiming with a harmless laser gun

Patrick McFarland, the Office of Personnel Management's inspector general and dean of the government's 57 inspectors general, has said privately that he would ask the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, the inspector generals' self-policing body, to look into Ms. Rehnquist's use of the gun, other federal employees say. "My best and only answer is 'no comment' regarding the gun situation," says Mr. McFarland, appointed by the first President Bush in 1990. Of high turnover in her office, he adds: "For any political appointee to come in and eliminate people -- if that's true, it's absolutely improper."...

...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 ," in which health-care companies found to have defrauded the government acquiesce to strict reporting conditions, saying she was "concerned about [their] financial impact" on providers. ...

...Ms. Rehnquist, the office's only political appointee, was so suspicious of civil-servant holdovers from the Clinton administration that she had to be talked out of requiring annual loyalty pledges from
deputies, ...


...One incident in particular raised eyebrows in the inspector general's office and is being looked into by the Finance Committee.

Florida Audit Postponed

Early this year, inspector general officials decided to audit Florida's pension fund amid indications that the Treasury, which contributes money to the fund for state employees who do federal work, had been overcharged. Shortly before auditors were to meet with state officials to start the process in April, Kathleen Shanahan, Gov. Jeb Bush's chief of staff and a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, got word to Ms. Rehnquist that Florida wanted a delay, people close to the inspector general's office said. She granted the request.

Subordinates suspected politics because the delay assured that the audit wouldn't be done until after Election Day...


Another one for the 'if this were the Clinton administration' files...