DHS scolded on financial accountability
Forty-five days after deadline to appoint Senate-confirmed chief financial officer, no candidates have been interviewed.
Homeland Security has yet to fulfill several key requirements of a law designed to prompt stronger financial management, a House lawmaker said Thursday.
The DHS Financial Accountability Act (H.R. 4259), signed by President Bush in October 2004, allows six months for the appointment of a chief financial officer subject to Senate confirmation. But 45 days after that deadline, no candidates have been named, said Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa., the act's sponsor.
"My understanding is you've not yet even begun interviewing potential nominees . . . why the delay?" Platts asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff at a House Government Reform Committee hearing.
Department officials are aware of the law's requirements and are working to fill the slot, Chertoff responded. "We have a very able CFO on board now," he said. "Of course we know we need to find somebody who is going to ultimately be nominated for a Senate-confirmed position."
There has been "substantial turnover" among the department's top executives, Chertoff noted, and the process of finding replacements can be cumbersome. "First of all, these are challenging jobs," he said. "Sometimes, the people you want for them don't necessarily want to give up their lucrative careers to take them." Background checks take a while as well, Chertoff said.
That process should "pick up," Platts said. "We've [got] laws on the books and agencies just fail to comply with the law, and there's never any consequences. That certainly doesn't work back home when citizens don't comply with the law."
Platts said that he has nothing against Andrew Maner, the current CFO at Homeland Security. The Financial Accountability Act, however, requires Senate confirmation of the CFO to ensure that the position is filled by the "best possible" official, Platts said.
DHS also is stalling on a provision that requires annual audits of the department's internal controls-checks and balances against waste, fraud and abuse-beginning in fiscal 2006, Platts said. The fiscal 2006 budget submitted by the administration would push the deadline for an initial internal controls audit back three years, he said.
Homeland Security officials are "moving forward on this briskly," Chertoff said. In March, Maner created an internal control committee and in May, DHS worked with the Office of Management and Budget to write a guide for implementing the law's provisions. The department's fiscal 2006 budget request also includes $5.2 million, and seeks five extra full-time employees, to help meet the law's provisions.
"It is a challenge," Chertoff acknowledged. "We have a lot of legacy agencies. So we have not only the challenge of meeting a new standard, but also bringing together and binding all the existing legacies."
DHS is the first federal agency legally bound to obtain an audit opinion on internal controls.