Gao Report

Federal housing officials violated government regulations last year and made extraordinary efforts to manipulate and control an employment discrimination investigation aimed at HUD's chief investigator, congressional investigators charged in a report released yesterday.Then, they tried to impede an investigation of their actions, according to the document issued by the General Accounting Office.The report was the latest development in a long-running feud between Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew M. Cuomo and Inspector General Susan Gaffney.

WASHINGTON -- The major airlines will disclose this week exactly what pledges of customer service they are making as part of a voluntary program they agreed to this year to stave off federal legislation on passenger rights.Each airline is supposed to tell the Transportation Department by Wednesday how it will implement the voluntary plan. David Fuscus, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, the big airlines' trade group, said that the airlines would probably post their plans on their Web sites soon.

The Navy plans to spend almost $50 million on Maryland-built radar jammers despite a report from the General Accounting Office which concludes that the devices are flawed.The recently issued report finds that the Airborne Self-Protection Jammer, or ASPJ, was effective in protecting fighter planes from a particular missile threat over Bosnia. But the controversial system offered no advantage or even failed against other threats, the report says."It's not as bad as opponents thought; it's not as good as proponents thought," said a source familiar with the system's performance.

WASHINGTON -- As federal investigators in North Carolina sift through stolen Marine munitions that include dozens of hand grenades and more than 40 pounds of plastic explosive, a government report released yesterday said such weapons "continue to be vulnerable" to insider theft in the military.Weapons and explosives that filled five 27-foot trucks were seized last week by federal agents in North Carolina and Virginia. The haul included more than 100 machine guns and at least 50 crates of small-arms ammunition, said investigators who, speaking on condition of anonymity, offered the most detailed accounting of the seizures.

WASHINGTON - Tens of thousands of workers at the National Security Agency and other spy agencies do not have the same personnel protections as other federal employees, according to a government study released today, leading one lawmaker to press for changes at what she termed "the last plantation."The General Accounting Office, Congress' watchdog arm, found that most workers at Fort Meade-based NSA, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency are unable to appeal adverse actions such as reduction in pay, suspension or removal.

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Reserve Board has agreed to an outside audit of cash operations at the Los Angeles branch of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank.A preliminary General Accounting Office review found evidence that staff at the Los Angeles branch altered currency reports to make them agree with the bank's cash on hand.The GAO report also found accounting problems at the Los Angeles branch that might also arise at branches of the Philadelphia and Atlanta Federal Reserve banks, which use the same cash inventory system as the San Francisco Fed.The draft report recommends an immediate examination of that system by outside auditors.

The lowly penny, whose usefulness as a coin has become overshadowed by its image as a nuisance, has finally become more expensive to produce and distribute than it's worth.It is sorry news for an icon symbolizing thrift and good luck, and it has accelerated talk of the penny's demise.Politicians say it is no longer a question of "if" the one-cent coin will be abolished, but "when.""We're just looking at ways to make life a little easier," said Rep. Michael N. Castle, head of a House banking subcommittee looking into the penny's future.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett of Western Maryland called yesterday for a congressional investigation into the use of White House helicopters by staff members despite a GAO report that found no evidence of widespread misuse of the copters.Mr. Bartlett had asked the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to gather information after David Watkins, a top White House aide, lost his job last year after using the presidential helicopter for a golfing trip to Holly Hills Country Club near New Market, in Mr. Bartlett's district.

Flawed GAO report is unfair to therapistsI am writing to correct several errors in the Associated Press story "GAO says therapists overcharge Medicare" (April 20). While there are many deficiencies in the General Accounting Office report itself, I am more troubled by factual errors and inaccuracies in the AP story.For example, the article begins with the statement that therapists are drastically overcharging Medicare for nursing home care.It goes on to characterize GAO auditors as uncovering ". . . numerous examples of overbilling, from . . . therapists . . ."

WASHINGTON -- The General Accounting Office (GAO) recently reviewed a program intended to test applicants for entry-level federal jobs in the U.S. government's ranks, and found it time-consuming, burdensome and inefficient.The program, the GAO found, falls far short of just about everybody's expectations -- from the applicants seeking jobs to the people who do the hiring.Known as Administrative Careers With America (ACWA), the program seeks to find qualified applicants for entry-level jobs in more than 100 government occupations.

The Defense Department needs to provide more information and help to counties in Maryland and elsewhere that are facing clogged roads, crowded classrooms and other problems because of growth at military bases, a new report says. The Government Accountability Office, the watchdog arm of Congress, says in its report that while the Pentagon and other agencies have provided some funds to help communities plan for base-related growth, the issue has not received the necessary "high-level leadership."

Washington -- As Congress opened a monthlong showdown with President Bush over Iraq, Senate war critics yesterday demanded evidence that the security improvements claimed by the White House could be sustained once American forces hand off the task of maintaining order to Iraqi military units. Establishing a theme likely to be repeated during coming hearings, Democratic senators pressed the nation's senior legislative analyst for indications that security gains could last. But David M. Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office, said it remained unclear whether Iraq's military and police could maintain the improvements brought about since an additional 28,500 U.S. troops were sent to Iraq this year.

The Department of Education, after months of criticism for its lax oversight of the federal student loan program, still has no system to detect and uncover misconduct by lenders and protect student borrowers, a government report said yesterday. The report, prepared by the General Accountability Office and released by congressional Democrats, found that the department "has no oversight tools" to see whether lenders are giving improper incentives to colleges to steer student borrowers their way and since 1989, the department has offered lenders no "comprehensive guidance" on what incentives might be forbidden.

Workers feeling uneasy about their retirement safety nets will find little comfort from a new government watchdog report that is critical of the Labor Department's enforcement of employer retirement-plan laws. The Government Accountability Office criticizes the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), the Labor Department office charged with enforcing retirement-plan laws, for failing to fully implement enforcement upgrades that GAO recommended several years ago. "Since our 2002 review, EBSA's enforcement program continues to use performance measures that generally focus on how well the agency is managing and using its resources rather than on its overall impact on the security of employee benefits," said the GAO report, which can be found at www.gao.

Imagine that you just picked up a terrific pair of Lacoste sneakers on sale. Then, the phone rings a month or two later. The store is demanding that you hand over more money for the same shoes sitting in your closet. Crazy talk, huh? That's how it works in the whacked-out world of credit-card companies. They've got ways to zing you even when you think you're in the clear. Amazingly, they're getting away with it. For now. It's getting harder - some might say downright impossible - to be knowledgeable when it comes to credit cards.

The aging global antenna network that keeps NASA in touch with its most distant space probes is fragile and may not be able to meet rising demands for its services, according to a government report. A review of NASA's Deep Space Network by the General Accounting Office found that portions of the 40-year-old system are shut down 16 hours a week for repairs and maintenance, on average. The GAO report to the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics cited three antenna outages in just five months last year that resulted in the loss of 241 minutes of science data from the Stardust, Deep Impact and three Mars orbiter missions.

The General Services Administration announced this week that it is offering 700 federal workers buyouts in the hope that almost 400 of them will accept. The reason: Two of GSA's divisions, which rely heavily on fees for services provided to other agencies, are operating in the red. Four years ago, this corporate-style downsizing would have been unheard of in federal circles, but according to a recent Government Accountability Office report, it is becoming more common after a 2002 bill allowed agencies to "reshape" rather than merely downsize their staffs.

WASHINGTON -- More than a year after the Food and Drug Administration announced that it had strengthened its drug safety system, the agency lacks a reliable way to keep track of emerging problems, congressional investigators concluded in a report to be released today. The Government Accountability Office found that a new Drug Safety Oversight Board and other FDA initiatives "are unlikely to address all the gaps" in the agency's system for monitoring the long-term safety of prescription drugs approved for market.

The government program to clean up the Chesapeake Bay lacks credibility because it uses misleading numbers that underestimate pollution and exaggerate successes, a federal agency reported yesterday. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said the Chesapeake Bay Program, which is run by the federal and state governments, should have independent scientists reviewing its reports to make sure they don't sugar-coat truths about the bay's health. Environmentalists complain that such exaggerations allow federal officials and the leaders of states surrounding the bay to make impressive-sounding claims that help them politically while undermining public support for increased funding and stronger pollution controls.

WASHINGTON - Congressional investigators raised concerns yesterday about security lapses at U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, reporting episodes of guards being drunk on duty and possible rigged tests of plant defense systems. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cannot provide assurances that the nation's 65 nuclear power facilities can be defended against terrorist attack. Rep. Christopher Shays, chairman of a Government Reform Committee panel, told Luis Reyes, the NRC's operations director, that the commission lacked "intensity" in dealing with potential terrorist attacks.