What Inspector General Geral Walpin Was Fired For?

Washington Examiner:

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
06/23/09 12:05 AM EDT

The board of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees the AmeriCorps program, is made up of Democrats and Republicans, no matter who is in the White House. Having members from both parties is a congressionally mandated requirement for the national service agency.

In the controversy over President Obama's abrupt firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin, Republicans on Capitol Hill have been asking who made the decision to get rid of Walpin, a Republican who had just finished a politically sensitive investigation in which he discovered that a prominent Obama supporter, Sacramento, Calif. Mayor Kevin Johnson, had misused hundreds of thousands of dollars of AmeriCorps money.

The corporation has told Congress that members of the board, who do not serve full-time and are not closely involved in the day-to-day operations of the corporation, unanimously supported the decision to fire Walpin. But the corporation has never said the board unanimously supported the way in which Walpin was fired.

And indeed, a long discussion with a Republican member of the board suggests that while there was, in fact, agreement on firing Walpin, it's not clear whether there was sufficient cause to do it. Nor is it clear why the White House decided to lower the boom in a way that defied the law governing how inspectors general can be fired.

Walpin and the management of the corporation clashed repeatedly over his investigations into AmeriCorps projects. The disagreements came to a head at a May 20 board meeting when Walpin, by his own account, "lectured" board members for going along with the corporation's politically appointed management and closing out his investigation of Kevin Johnson's educational organization, St. HOPE, which received about $850,000 in AmeriCorps money and misused at least half of it. [Read the rest]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Comments

[rag heae]

The tabloid trash media is waiting to report this as soon as they find a way to spin this into damage control for Obama and totally ruin Walpins reputation and smear Walpin.