The Department of Energy has been without a permanent inspector general for nearly eight months, and it will be even longer before Susan Beard, nominated for the post by the Obama administration in April, gets her chance to be approved by the full Senate.
At press time Friday, it had been more than a week since Beard appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which still needs to decide whether to recommend her nomination. Because she is a proposed inspector general who serves for life, the panel would then send Beard on for a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The Governmental Affairs committee, which would not have a say in the process until and unless Energy and Natural Resources acts on Beard’s nomination, has 20 days to hold a hearing, after which Beard would automatically get a vote in the full Senate.
No Energy and Natural Resources decision on the nomination had been scheduled at press time. A Senate aide said Beard and DOE had not yet answered questions in writing as requested by the committee during its May 12 confirmation hearing. Likewise, an aide to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), said that while that lawmaker received a response from Beard on Thursday, “it did not address his request during the hearing to provide a timeline for possible actions at Hanford” to improve safety and whistleblower culture. Wyden subsequently “submitted the same request through the committee’s questions for the record, and hopes to receive a response to his request through that process.”
Inspectors general are the top internal watchdogs at federal agencies. Budgets for the IG’s office are typically walled off from the rest of the agency they oversee, and traditionally less vulnerable to the yearly puts and takes of the federal budget process than are other agency programs.
Wyden, whose state is a not signatory to the Tri-Party Agreement that governs Hanford Site cleanup, but does sit on the Hanford Advisory Board, was the most critical of all his colleagues during the May 12 hearing — not of Beard herself, per se, but of what he perceives as continuing waste and whistleblower retaliation at Hanford, where workers have in recent weeks again complained of exposure to hazardous chemicals.
With regard to whistle blower retaliation, Wyden seeks to avoid more incidents such as the one Hanford subcontractor URS Energy and Construction settled last year with former Waste Treatment Plant research and technology manager Walter Tamosaitis for $4.1 million. Tamosaitis was removed from the project in July 2010 shortly after he said he raised concerns about the future safe and efficient operation of the plant under construction. He continued to be employed by URS, but had no meaningful work for 15 months and was laid off in 2013, he alleged in court.
Wyden used a similar slowdown tactic last year to draw attention to issues at Hanford, placing a one-month hold on the nomination of Monica Regalbuto to become DOE’s assistant secretary for environmental management. This time, however, Wyden has not yet threatened to reach out out to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to put a hold on Beard’s confirmation.
Besides Hanford, the nominee also fielded questions from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) who wanted to know how Beard as inspector general could help policymakers decide what to do about the ballooning cost of the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility being built at DOE’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. The agency says the plant, under construction since 2007, could take more than 30 years to finish and cost more than $45 billion to build and operate.
“There’s going to be decisions that have to be made about this, whether to go forward,” Franken said. “And I think a lot of that will be based on the conclusions that the inspector general’s office comes up with.”
The MOX plant, designed to turn weapon-usable plutonium into commercial reactor fuel, is for now a key cog in U.S. arms-reductions efforts, under a pact finalized with Russia in 2010. The Obama administration has since said the plant is too expensive to finish, and that the 34 tons of excess plutonium covered by the deal with Russia should instead be diluted at Savannah River and stored in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.
Beard said that while “IG’s do not set policy … they can put out facts and information to inform policymakers,” and that the next DOE IG could do more “to make sure the facts are out there.”
Alongside questions about the DOE nuclear enterprise, Beard’s longtime tenure as an agency attorney and advocate might be an obstacle to her nomination.
Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who with her Energy and Natural Resources gavel is effectively the first gatekeeper for Beard, wondered at the confirmation hearing whether someone who has spent nearly 30 years defending DOE, as Beard has, can successfully transition into an overseer of her colleagues.
“The roles are very different,” Murkowski told Beard. “You would be scrutinizing the department that you’ve been working within for these past 27 years, looking with areas to deal with waste, fraud and abuse.”
Beard countered that “as the designated agency ethics official, I have to preserve the public’s trust in federal employees,” and that “there have been a number of occasions where I have referred current and former federal DOE employees to the inspector general’s office for review because I was concerned and had information that may have violated criminal statute or regulation.”
A spokesperson for the Energy Department in Washington did not reply to a request for comment for this story.
