By Jim McElhatton , The Washington Times
One EPA employee spent up to six hours a day looking at pornography while on the job, and another employee has been allowed to work from home for years but had little to show for it, according to an ongoing internal investigation that the agency’s inspector general will detail to Congress on Wednesday.
The revelations show that time and attendance fraud at the Environmental Protection Agency goes beyond John Beale — the former top official who collected nearly $900,000 in salary and bonuses for time worked when he was pretending to be on secret CIA spy missions.
The pornography case has been referred to the Justice Department. Investigators said they uncovered 7,000 pornographic images on a government server.
“When an OIG special agent arrived at this employee’s work space to conduct an interview, the special agent witnessed the employee actively viewing pornography on his government-issued computer,” Allan Williams, deputy inspector general for the EPA, said in prepared remarks he will deliver Wednesday to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
The committee is holding a hearing looking into problems at the agency’s Office of Homeland Security and broader employee misconduct issues in the wake of the scandal involving Mr. Beale.
In the case of the EPA employee working from home, the inspector general said even though there was little evidence of productivity, a manager awarded exemplary performance reviews that resulted in cash bonuses.
In another example documented by the inspector general, an executive unable to do work for at least the past year because of health problems has continued drawing a full salary without doing any substantive work.
“These examples are just a few of the OIG’s employee misconduct cases at the EPA,” Mr. Williams said.
Read more at The Washington Times
