Outgoing EPA inspector general tells of search for accountability

Nikki Tinsley, inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency since 1997, retired from the federal government last Friday after almost 35 years of public service. An ambitious leader within the inspector general community, Tinsley shared her reflections on the past decade as a federal auditor in an interview with Government Executive.

Tinsley said she sees her greatest legacy as one of culture change at the agency. "When I came to headquarters, our auditors thought they had done their job when they had identified a problem," she said.

"When I got to EPA, I automatically thought that programs were supposed to do something," she said, noting that she has a penchant for program analysis that can be attributed in part to an early-career stint at the Government Accountability Office, as well as to a personality type that won't just leave things alone.

Tinsley said she was eager to take government auditing past the traditional inspector general's realm of fraud, waste and abuse, to look not just at how money is managed but also at how well the spending of that money accomplishes agency objectives.

A major focus of this effort in recent years has been grants management. About half of EPA's budget is spent on grants to state and local governments, research institutions and others who carry out the day-to-day work of protecting the environment, Tinsley said.

Just a few years ago, she said, in investigating the performance of a drinking water program at the agency, her office asked what performance measures the program was working toward. "They said, 'We don't have any performance measures. Congress didn't intend for us to accomplish anything with this program -- we're just supposed to hand out the grant money,' " Tinsley recalled with a laugh. "And they believed that!"

In April 2003, her office released a grants management plan to guide EPA and help it serve as a model for grant-making at other agencies. Last October, a governmentwide effort to increase accountability for the $450 billion the federal government dispenses in grants culminated with the publication of a best practices guide developed with 14 inspectors general, GAO, the Office of Management and Budget and representatives from several state and local governments.

"Now everyone in this organization knows that our work isn't done until that problem is solved," Tinsley said.

Tinsley said the Bush administration's President's Management Agenda, with its traffic-light score card, helps make agencies more accountable.

Tinsley described a report that inspectors general have made annually to Congress since the Clinton years, listing the auditors' assessments of the top ten management challenges facing agencies. The top six or so of these would be common among the lists, Tinsley said, also lining up with items on GAO's high risk watch list.

"Well, this administration looked at those issues … and they said this is the President's Management Agenda," Tinsley said. "For the first time, the things we'd been telling people for years all of a sudden became important, because there was a score card."

In June 2003, EPA was one of the first agencies to reach green status, the highest possible mark, for its financial management, an accomplishment that Tinsley attributed in part to the decision to audit the agency's financial statements in-house, rather than contracting out the process. She said her office was hard on the agency initially, but added that she thinks the tough love helped get the necessary systems and processes in place.

Even as she announced her retirement, Tinsley dropped a last challenge on the table.

In a resignation letter to the president, she wrote, "I fear the pay inequities that were created with the implementation of the National Defense Authorization Act for [fiscal] 2004 will make it increasingly difficult to convince career employees to accept IG appointments in the future. I hope your administration will work with Congress to address this issue and to encourage qualified career employees to serve as inspectors general in the future."

Tinsley and her IG colleagues have been pursuing this reform since 2004, when the defense authorization act moved members of the Senior Executive Service to a performance-based pay system. Under the new system, inspectors general who came from the SES ranks had no supervisor from whom to receive performance evaluations without the appearance of a conflict of interest. Thus, those IGs effectively had their salaries capped, receiving locality-based pay increases but no raises or bonuses.

At the point of Tinsley's retirement, a senior aide in her office earned $23,000 per year more than Tinsley did. With bonuses figured in, Tinsley said, the restrictions can be worth up to $80,500 annually -- a difference that affects pension payouts as well as paychecks. She said she had some colleagues who might have been interested in the position she's vacating but for the pay problem.

The issue could easily be resolved, but it only affects a handful of people, and the legislators who would have to approve the fix have full plates, Tinsley said. "It's been frustrating for the inspector general community," she said. "We think it has an impact on the future because we think career employees do bring something to the table as inspectors general."