Conflict of Interest

I don't work for the federal government, but odds are good that someday I will. For the past several years, I've worked as a lobbyist. It's just as important to keep your eyes on conflict of interest in this career as it is when you're a fed. Conflict of interest is something that everyone should be aware of, especially those in senior positions. I took a class on it and had the policy posted on my wall at a previous job. I believe that the great majority of people are very well-versed in conflict provisions, but just choose to ignore them. My NSF funding stopped before I started lobbying on their behalf. I did not give funding to those door-to-door clean water/air groups that lobby for the EPA while I was working on behalf of that agency. It's doubtful that a $25 contribution would have cost me my job or even earned me a reprimand. Honestly, I'm not that important, and the contribution would have been in a grey area. But I didn't want to risk the sanctity of my position, or of the work I was doing to fight for basic research in this country.

So when news breaks about people like David Schwartz, it makes me upset. Disgusted, actually. He deliberately flouted conflict of interest guidelines to fill his own pockets. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) brought this up again the other day and it ended up back in the news, which is why I'm all riled up. The June 26 Washington Post article included this:

In a telephone interview yesterday, Schwartz said he made mistakes, which he blamed on "misunderstandings" about institute rules and "poor communication," for which he said he takes "full responsibility."

In most of the world, this would be followed by an HR rep showing you the policy and giving you options for how to announce your resignation. But it's nearly impossible to do that to the director of a federal agency.

It's tempting to just dismiss this as a product of our bureaucracy and say that people should be held accountable for their own actions. But they are. The federal government gets you if you cheat. Eventually. And there's the problem. Agencies like the IRS spend far too much time checking out $75 tax credits and not enough time looking over the books at large corporations. The audit culture started in America after the Enron scandals, companies took it upon themselves to audit their books like crazy. My first job out of college contracted auditors for over 9 months per year. It was probably unnecessary, but better to be safe than sorry, right? This movement seems to have escaped the federal government. Many Congressional subcommittees on oversight were eliminated shortly after the Republican takeover in 1994. This is a microcosm of the larger problem.

Many people who do cheat the system have the word "former" in their title by the time they're caught. It's a lot less scandalous to indict a private citizen who worked for the federal government five years ago than it is to get a current employee. It's also not as interesting to the American public, many of whom would rather spend their time watching "breaking news" coverage of a routine traffic stop turned car chase in Nevada or a dog being rescued from a tree (how do dogs get into trees, anyway) in North Carolina. Congress has spent a lot of time on lobbying reform over the past couple of years. Will it take an even more egregious offense than the ones already committed by federal employees to strengthen oversight at the agency level? One hopes not.