Click here for a copy of the letter
WASHINGTON, D.C.- Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., ranking member and former chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and fellow committee Republican Darrell Issa of California renewed their call today for Chairman Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., to hold accountable the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) for lapses, cover-ups and mismanagement that have cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
The ranking member and Rep. Issa pointed out that Waxman had acknowledged the need for continued oversight of MMS’ shortcomings in his Oversight Plan, adopted in February 2007. They threatened to take steps toward holding necessary to hold a minority hearing if Waxman did not agree to take up the matter before the 110th Congress concludes its business perhaps as early as the end of this month.
“We all know that many agencies of this government are ‘broken,’ and MMS should be at the top of the list,” they wrote. “Despite repeated requests, the committee has remained inactive and unwilling to demand accountability from the Interior Department and MMS for their role in losing out on, according to GAO, tens of billions of dollars over the life of these leases.”
During the 109th Congress, the full Government Reform Committee and the Subcommittee on Energy and Resources combined to hold five hearings that uncovered the billions in lost revenue because of “systemic corruption and mismanagement which has permeated MMS during both the Clinton and Bush administrations,” according to the letter.
The committee’s MMS probe, which began by focusing on lost royalty payments that resulted from improperly executed leases on offshore drilling sites, revealed an agency plagued by management problems and ethical shortcomings that still need to be addressed.
One alleges that a key supervisor at the minerals revenue management office worked with two aides to steer a consulting contract to an aide who had retired, violating competitive procurement rules. The other two focus on “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” and other unethical behavior in the service’s royalty-in-kind program, which collects about $4 billion a year in oil and gas rather than cash royalties, then resells it on the open market.
The IG alleged employees of this program accepted golf, ski and paintball outings, meals and drinks and tickets to concerts and pro football and baseball games. He also alleges several officials “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.”
Said Davis: “It was bad enough when we were merely trying to find out how much money had been lost and how it might be recovered because of the improperly executed leases. It was even worse when we discovered MMS could not even accurately tell how much oil was being pumped – and thus how much the government was owed. Now, we find this entire agency is in free fall. Employees are much too close to the private-sector executives they work with, and the culture of corruption, ineptitude and dirty dealing at the agency can’t go on.”
“We repeatedly asked Chairman Waxman to continue the investigation into why American taxpayers were not being paid billions in energy royalties they are rightfully owed,” Issa said. “Pelosi, Waxman and the Democrats generally love to bash big oil, but their reluctance to publicly address these multi-billion dollar losses, which date back to the Clinton Administration, is troubling.”
