Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Chair Joyce Connery repeatedly “undermined” the first board’s executive director of operations in ways “inconsistent” with federal law, according to a report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Inspector General.
The 15-page report on “actions inconsistent with the delegation of functions required by the Atomic Energy Act,” and dated August 2023, fleshes out issues included in an Office of Inspector General (OIG) public report released in December.
The document, released under the Freedom of Information Act, was seen this week by Exchange Monitor. DNFSB is the independent federal agency that makes safety recommendations about most Department of Energy nuclear weapon sites.
With backing from the two other Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) members at the time, Connery repeatedly excluded Joel Spangenberg, the board’s first executive director, from meetings with key senior DNFSB managers, although Congress created the post to oversee DNFSB administrative matters. The Inspector General’s office said Connery and the board denied Spangenberg’s request for additional staffing.
In a statement issued Monday evening through a spokesperson, DNFSB said Connery on Jan. 4 signed a “delegation memo” to the new operations director who joined the agency last month. The memo delegates administrative functions, appointment and supervision of employees not in the legal department, certain budget work and other functions to the new director.
“The board has and continues to focus on the mission of nuclear safety as our primary duty,” DNFSB said in the emailed statement. “Hiring and enabling great staff members allows us to do that.”
Connery said in December that OIG’s feedback was taken into account during the recent hiring of a second executive director of operations.
According to OIG, at one point, a member of the DNFSB general counsel’s office told OIG that Congress’s direction to the safety board is “mandatory” and the chair does not decide the executive director’s administrative scope.
Spangenberg, who left in 2022 and is now acting director of the U.S. Selective Service System, asked Connery at one point to be included in meetings she frequently held with DNFSB’s general manager and technical director, according to the report. Connery deemed this a sign of the executive director’s “distrust for me,” according to the OIG.
Senior managers told OIG Connery refused to allow the general manager and technical director, who both reported to the executive director, to provide Spangenberg with summaries of their meetings. The OIG document also said Connery appeared to overstep her bounds by being too involved in the hiring process of a human resources official who reported to the deputy general manager.
Spangenberg left the DNFSB executive director post in August 2022, after working less than two years in the newly-created job, a tenure that coincided with the COVID-19 era of virtual meetings. Mary Jean Buhler, former chief financial officer at the Export Import Bank, became DNFSB’s second executive director of operations on Dec. 3.
The operations director job was created through the National Defense Authorization Act of fiscal 2020. The executive director’s hiring was in reaction to what the Senate Armed Services Committee called a “disturbing picture” of the board contained in a 2018 National Academy of Public Administration report, OIG said.
The report cited a culture of mistrust and poor employee morale at DNFSB. The report also said board members should concentrate on only “critical strategic matters worthy of a presidentially-appointed, senate-confirmed official’s precious time.”
Even after the new director position was added, the “entire board was involved in administrative matters that should have been within the [executive director’s] delegated authority,” the Office of Inspector General said. Connery signed agency decisions from approval of remote work, to some employee promotions, and requests from some technical staff for access to classified DOE papers, OIG said.
The board’s active role in workaday matters did not sit well with some senior DNFSB managers who complained it took up too much time better spent on safety. “If you added up the amount of time [the board] talked about various issues, nuclear safety would fall to be about fourth on the list,” a senior manager told OIG. If board members spent less time on mundane matters, they would have more time for DOE site visits and safety reviews, some staff managers told OIG.
Unless the director’s authority is resolved it could result in more workplace “disruption” in the future, the OIG said. Congress wanted the executive director of operations to be the senior staff official at the board, said the OIG.
In comments to the Office of Inspector General, Connery, vice chair Thomas Summers and then-board member Jessie Hill Roberson, all indicated that inertia and comfort with past practice made the board slow to change.
