A new report from the government’s internal watchdog rips the U.S. Census Bureau for years of unchecked “pervasive misconduct” — behavior that, according to the report, has “criminal implications.”
The report, out this month from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the U.S. Department of Commerce, isn’t peppered with half-baked hypothetical language about the Bureau’s longstanding abuses. In outlining how employees at the Census Hiring and Employment Check (CHEC) office falsified information, lied about hours worked and pursued vengeance against others who tried to fix things, OIG gets straight to the point:
On September 15, 2015, the U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) issued a report to the U.S. Census Bureau (“Census”) presenting its findings of widespread misconduct in the Census Hiring and Employment Check (“CHEC”) Office.The CHEC Office performs a sensitive task in the federal government, namely processing background checks for prospective Census Bureau employees and contractors, including personnel who walk door-to-door to millions of homes across America. Notwithstanding the importance of the CHEC Office’s mission, the evidence obtained over the course of the OIG’s investigation establishes that many current and former CHEC employees engaged in pervasive misconduct over several years, including widespread time and attendance abuse, misuse of office, and repeated attempts to retaliate against a perceived whistleblower. These findings are summarized in greater detail below.
The OIG’s investigation resulted from a hotline complaint alleging that certain CHEC Office employees had been fraudulently reporting their time and attendance. Specifically, the complaint alleged that six CHEC Office employees had regularly recorded and received pay for time not actually worked since at least 2010. The OIG referred the complaint to Census and required the Bureau to notify the OIG of the disposition of the complaint. Census reported to the OIG that it found “significant misconduct related to the receipt of pay for time not worked on the part of each employee” named in the initial complaint. The Bureau further stated that it expanded its review to include three additional employees and found that those employees also engaged in the same misconduct. The Bureau proposed the removal (i.e., termination) of all nine employees.
Due to the criminal implications of the conduct at issue, the OIG opened this investigation into the fraudulent reporting of time and attendance by the subject employees. The OIG’s preliminary analysis not only confirmed significant discrepancies in time and attendance recording by the identified employees, but also indicated that the problem was much broader than a specific group of employees. The OIG therefore expanded the scope of its investigation to include 40 current and former employees in the CHEC Office. Further, during the course of our investigation, the OIG uncovered evidence of additional misconduct by certain CHEC employees, including the misuse of official position, whistleblower retaliation, and interfering with the OIG’s investigation.
The list gets specific. One employee used his position to get his friends and family government jobs. Another was “involved in a sexual relationship” with a contractor whom he interviewed and then hired on for government work.
Another verbally abused a would-be whistle-blower in the following way:
At an office social event held for a [census employment office] employee, this employee held a knife in his hand to cut the cake and, while making a stabbing motion with his arm, said something to the effect of, “This is for who went to the OIG!”
The same employee called the whistle-blower a rat and a snitch in conversations with other employees, and a coward and a chickenshit in front of all employees at an office meeting.
All this information comes out of the OIG’s abbreviated summary. For the full details, check out the full 59-page report.
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