From The Hill:
President Trump has quietly appointed his Social Security Administration (SSA) Inspector General to also oversee a much different agency: the Interior Department.
On May 28 Gail Ennis began her second job overseeing the Interior Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), a role she will keep for the foreseeable future, an OIG office source confirmed to The Hill.
The Trump administration is still awaiting the confirmation of Mark Greenblatt, the former Commerce Department Inspector General (IG), to formally head the Interior’s OIG office. ...
Ennis is the second Trump political appointee who the administration has attempted to put in the Interior OIG role.
Earlier this year, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson announced to staff that Assistant HUD Secretary Suzanne Tufts would replace Kendall. Because Tufts had been previously confirmed by the Senate, she would not have to go through another confirmation process for the role.
However, following backlash to that announcement, the Interior Department later said the announcement was a misunderstanding and Carson reversed the move. Tufts resigned not long after. ...There's the obvious problem here of one person trying to do two jobs but there's the less obvious problem that even though the Inspectors General are appointed by the President, they're supposed to act in a non-partisan way. This indicates to me that Ennis is involved with the White House more than I think appropriate.
2 comments:
As far as I can tell from this blog, Ennis's credentials for SSA IG were never questioned and her nomination and confirmation proceeded without incident (just took a long time). And the stories linked say that Greenblatt's nomination for Interior IG sailed through committee on voice vote (no meaningful Democratic opposition, unlike with Interior Secretary or the previous would-be acting OIG, Tufts). So Trump is appointing a noncontroversial, confirmed IG to be acting IG for another agency so as to not leave that office rudderless while the also-noncontroversial appointment for full IG is pending in Congress. That would probably be called good government if it were anyone else in the White House.
To get down to brass tacks, if Trump really wanted to give Zinke cover, wouldn't he just leave the Interior IG chair empty?
normally I'd respond that one couldn't get away with having a vacant OIG head position that long but with previously-presidential-resignation-inducing things breaking in the news on a near-daily basis and rarely resulting in anything let alone resignation of any player, I wonder why they didn't choose that course myself because they'd probably not face any meaningful heat over it.
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