Staff vacancies and turnover have weakened the Interior Department’s ethics program, the Government Accountability Office said in a March 15 report.
Four of Interior’s 14 ethics department positions are vacant, all of them attorney positions, the report by the GAO, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, said.
The “vacancies affected the ethics program’s ability to properly document policies and procedures as well as file and review financial disclosure forms,” it said.
The role of ethics offices of federal agencies is to prevent conflicts of interest.
The report didn’t accuse Interior of intentionally starving its ethics department of resources. ...