The General Services Administration: A Victim of “Terrorism”

According to the Wall Street Journal (see story “The Ousting of Lurita Doan”), Lurita Doan (pictured), as chief of the General Services Administration, oversaw “tens of billions of dollars in government contracts”  with the help of inspectors general.  In her two-year tenure as GSA chief, Doan generated a lot of controversy. 

In 2006, frustrated with oversight by those inspectors general, Doan proposed to cut the budget of the inspector general’s office by $5 million.  Doan claimed that she was going after wasteful government spending, despite the fact that the office reported that its oversight had saved the government $1 billion over the previous two years through its watchdog efforts with respect to government contracts.  The Washington Post obtained a copy of notes from a GSA staff meeting in which she chided the inspectors general as terrorists: “There are two kinds of terrorism in the US: the external kind; and,internally, the IGs have terrorized the Regional Administrators,”

In January 2007, Doan admitted she made a “mistake” in awarding a no-bid contract to a friend.

In March, 2007, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform initiated investigations into Ms. Doan’s conduct that may have violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits partisan campaign activities on federal property, when she allegedly directed GSA administrators to “help our [Republican] candidates” in a teleconference with one of Karl Rove’s deputies on the line.

A full catalog of Washington Post stories covering Doan’s career in public service is available here.

This week, Doan finally resigned from the GSA at the request of the White House.  Heckuva job, Doanie.

[Jeremy Telman]