Getting to the bottom of the AmeriCorps IG firing
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
June 22, 2009
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The board of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees the AmeriCorps program, is made up of Democrats and Republicans, no matter who is in the White House. Having members from both parties is a congressionally mandated requirement for the national service agency.
In the controversy over President Obama's abrupt firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin, Republicans on Capitol Hill have been asking who made the decision to get rid of Walpin, a Republican who had just finished a politically sensitive investigation in which he discovered that a prominent Obama supporter, Sacramento, Calif. Mayor Kevin Johnson, had misused hundreds of thousands of dollars of AmeriCorps money.
The corporation has told Congress that members of the board, who do not serve full-time and are not closely involved in the day-to-day operations of the corporation, unanimously supported the decision to fire Walpin. But the corporation has never said the board unanimously supported the way in which Walpin was fired.
And indeed, a long discussion with a Republican member of the board suggests that while there was, in fact, agreement on firing Walpin, it's not clear whether there was sufficient cause to do it. Nor is it clear why the White House decided to lower the boom in a way that defied the law governing how inspectors general can be fired.
Walpin and the management of the corporation clashed repeatedly over his investigations into AmeriCorps projects. The disagreements came to a head at a May 20 board meeting when Walpin, by his own account, "lectured" board members for going along with the corporation's politically appointed management and closing out his investigation of Kevin Johnson's educational organization, St. HOPE, which received about $850,000 in AmeriCorps money and misused at least half of it.
"Jerry can never get to the point where you can agree to disagree," the board member said of Walpin. "You either agree with him, or he keeps beating you up."
The board member says at one point in the meeting, Walpin seemed to have trouble concentrating. "There were long pauses on his part," the board member says. "He clearly was not able to answer the questions we were putting to him."
The White House later accused Walpin of being "confused, disoriented [and] unable to answer questions" at the meeting. Walpin concedes he was not feeling well but does not recall serious problems.
After the meeting, the board member says, "We said to the chairman, 'We want you to go over to the White House and make the recommendation that we get a new inspector general.'"
Despite the problems at the meeting, the GOP board member stresses that the decision to fire Walpin was "not one incident. It was a series of things."
Board members felt Walpin sometimes said inappropriate things, such as the time he told a group of AmeriCorps grant recipients that his fraud investigators carry firearms. Walpin says it is a joke he has told often, but some on the board didn't like it.
Members also cite an equal employment opportunity complaint in Walpin's office -- not against Walpin himself -- that Walpin dismisses as having no merit.
The member also cites Walpin's decision last January to telecommute so he could spend more time at his home in New York. "Now, more than ever, we need a real hands-on inspector general," the member said. But the board did not tell Walpin he couldn't telecommute.
There's no doubt that Walpin and the board didn't get along. But inspectors general often discover inconvenient facts -- misused money, for example -- that can embarrass organizations and their boards. There's always going to be tension between them.
In addition, there seems no question that the White House's handling of the firing -- calling Walpin on the evening of June 10 and telling him that he had one hour to resign or be terminated -- ignored the law that requires the president to give Congress 30 days' notice, and cause, before firing an inspector general. "I'm not going to comment on the process," the Republican board member said. He was open in saying that he agreed with the merits of the case against Walpin but repeated that wouldn't discuss "issues surrounding the process."
"You can draw your own conclusion," he said.
The conclusion is that there are still a lot of questions surrounding the firing of Gerald Walpin.
Byron York, The Examiner’s chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blog posts can be read daily at ExaminerPolitics.com.
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