On the heels of an announcement of newly proposed and very stringent carbon emissions standards from the Obama EPA, the agency is embroiled in a scandal that has the potential to rival similar scandals in the IRS and DOJ.
According to a report released to Fox News by the agency’s inspector general, at least eight EPA employees over recent months and years have been either terminated or placed on leave for “cases of alleged serious misconduct”.
In the report, the employees were allowed to remain on paid administrative leave for as long as two years while the cases were being handled internally by the agency, a move that cost taxpayers at least $1 million in salaries to the staff members under investigation.
What’s more, the Office of the Inspector General reports that its investigation into the matter has been met with routine road blocks where EPA officials have ‘stonewalled’ the inspector’s efforts to look further into the allegations, and in at least one case a branch of the agency prevented interviews of agency employees.
In a letter signed by 47 inspectors general that details the problem, the stonewalling by the agency is characteristic of a broader epidemic among government agencies that charge them with “serious limitations on access to records” that inhibit the ability of the OIG to hold them accountable to the taxpayers.
The revelation is just another added to the long list of scandals in an Obama era that was supposed to be the ‘honest and transparent‘ in history. With the 2016 election cycle just around the corner, skepticism over the federal government’s role in ordinary Americans’ lives will likely continue to grow.
