Report: EPA Isn't Required to Verify Staff Employment Histories
Friday, 06 Feb 2015 10:31 PM
By Joel Himelfarb
The Environmental Protection Agency, whose employees in recent years included a workplace pornography viewer and a phony CIA spy who bilked the agency out of $900,000, is not required to verify its hires' employment history, the Washington Free Beacon reported Friday.
According to an audit released by the EPA's Office of Inspector General, "U.S. Office of Personnel Management and EPA procedures do not have a requirement to verify prior employment or references for eligible job candidates."
The audit occurred in response to a request by Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter, who sought an investigation of EPA hiring policies after revelations about EPA executive John Beale, who scammed the agency out of a half-million dollars in bonuses and well over two years of paid time off over a 20-year period.
Beale also continued to collect a retention bonus — that was supposed to have expired in 2003 — up until 2013.
He also received a handicapped parking spot at the EPA after saying he suffers from the lingering effects of malaria he contracted during the Vietnam War. But in reality, Beale never served there.
Gena McCarthy, Beale's supervisor in the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation from 2009 to 2013, currently heads the agency. Her staff learned in 2011 that Beale was receiving bonuses he did not earn, but she did not act against him until two years later.
Beale later praised McCarthy, saying "she's a good manager" and "one of the smartest people I've ever met."
Beale is hardly the only employee who embarrassed the EPA in recent years.
The Free Beacon reported the agency also kept on the payroll an employee who viewed pornography on the job for as much as six hours a day. He received a $120,000 salary for his work — during which he viewed more than 7,000 pornographic files — and got "performance bonuses," as well.
Although he had been banned from the building, that employee was still being paid as of September.
Also, an employee at an EPA office in Denver nicknamed the "poop bandit" was reportedly clogging toilets in a bathroom and placing feces in a hallway, according to the website.
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