House passes bill to speed SEC hiring

The House passed a bill Tuesday to let the Securities and Exchange Commission speed hiring of new accountants and economists to investigate securities law violations, Bloomberg News reported.

The House approved the bill on a 423-0 vote. SEC officials say they need some 800 accountants, compliance examiners and economists in the next several months to handle more than 2,200 investigations following financial scandals at Enron Corp., WorldCom Inc. and other companies.

Supporters said the streamlined hiring procedure would help the SEC implement hiring that fits with a 63 percent budget increase that Congress gave the agency in fiscal 2003.

The SEC and the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 2,000 SEC employees, worked out an agreement to streamline the hiring process while preserving standard job protections for the new employees. The measure now goes to the Senate.

For a time, the SEC bill was wrapped into a civil service personnel bill including the Defense Department and NASA. Democrats and union leaders objected to that proposal, and the controversy threatened to delay the SEC bill.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael Oxley, R-Ohio, and Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., agreed to carve the measure out of the larger bill and send it to the floor separately, an Oxley spokeswoman said.