Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, a long-time and usually low-key member of Congress, this week did something out of character.
She wrote President Barack Obama asking him to fire the Commerce Department’s inspector general for misconduct.
Johnson, the ranking member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, had led a bipartisan investigation that found Inspector General Todd Zinser had been unethical in multiple instances, had retaliated against whistleblowers and hired his girlfriend to a high-paying position.
“I am convinced that in order to establish an effective and ethically sound office, a wholesale change in the top leadership of the Commerce Office of Inspector General is critically needed,” Johnson wrote Obama March 31st.
“I call on you to remove Mr. Zinser from office immediately and to take such other steps as are necessary to appoint qualified senior leadership with high ethical principles to lead the Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General.”
Zinser, who has held the Commerce IG position since 2007, earlier served in the Transportation Department’s IG office. In a statement from his office, he said that he was cooperating with Johnson’s committee and an investigation by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, which self-polices their conduct.
It is unusual to draw such high level attention to an inspector general, a watchdog position in all government agencies. The IGs, as they are known, are independent of the offices they monitor. Inspectors general serve at the pleasure of the president to insulate them from internal pressure and can only be removed by him.
Johnson, a member of Congress since 1993, does not usually go it alone, but decided to draw attention to Zinser the last day Congress met before the Easter recess. In a brief speech on the House floor March 26, she denounced Zinser and inserted a detailed account of the investigation in “extended remarks” that members may add to what they’ve said on the floor. They are then published in the Congressional Record.
Johnson was apparently motivated by the Republican-led House panel’s decision to let the inspector generals’ council conduct further investigations into Zinser instead of pursuing him more aggressively.
House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, did not know ahead of time of Johnson’s plans or of her letter to the president.
Among the Commerce Department agencies overseen by the panel is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center
The committee on a bipartisan basis first began looking at Zinser in 2012 and found a pattern of misbehavior.
Among the findings were that his staff imposed “gag rules” on departing employees to prevent them from talking to Congress or the press about the IG office; that he ignored whistleblower reports about agencies in Commerce; and when he himself was under investigation, began looking for whistleblowers on his own staff. Johnson questioned whether he was hiding evidence and said he was seen carting out a hand truck of boxes from his office.
Zinser hired a personal friend with whom he had had a relationship just as she was about to be terminated from the government’s most senior employee service. He raced to hire her, said Johnson, as assistant inspector general for administration at an annual salary of $150,000 and subsequently approved performance bonuses of more than $28,000.
“Mr. Zinser has only himself to blame for drawing our attention,” she said.