A regional director for the National Park Service, desiring "nicer" experiences on his travels, ran up nearly $11,500 in personal travel that he billed the Park Service for, and also collected nearly $6,000 in pay and per diem on some of these travels while not working, according to the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General.
Between 2011 and 2015, Michael A. Caldwell, the agency's Northeast Regional director, rented bigger vehicles than he should have to bring friends on some of his travels, covered lodging costs of personal guests, was reimbursed for mileage "that he never drove," rented an SUV for "an official trip two days before his official business was scheduled to start," and also "spent a day driving the SUV 450 miles out of the way for unofficial purposes," the OIG's report said.
"Caldwell admitted during his interviews that he had taken these trips and that he had knowingly violated federal travel regulations. He said that in doing so he had taken advantage of his official positions, first as a GS-15 deputy regional director and then as a member of the Senior Executive Service. He said he deserved, at minimum, a suspension," the OIG's report released Thursday said, adding that the case had been submitted to Park Service Director Jon Jarvis for disposition.
The case report didn't indicate whether Mr. Caldwell made restitution. But in the seven-page report (attached below) he was very forthcoming in admitting to the allegations made against him, stating that his travel vouchers had been "tainted and fraudulent.”
More so, he told the investigators that "he had arranged his official travel to suit his personal travel plans. He admitted that he was not trying to save the government money on his trips and was instead trying to have 'nicer' experiences. He said that if everyone in the government worked the way he did, 'we wouldn’t get anything done.'"
Park Service officials in Washington said Thursday evening that the matter was under review.
"The leadership of the National Park Service appreciates the Office of Inspector General for investigating this case and recognizes the importance of independent investigations in situations like this. The National Park Service is committed to creating a more accountable and responsible culture at all levels of the organization, particularly among its leaders," Tom Crosson, the agency's chief spokesman, wrote in an email.
"The OIG’s findings related to Mr. Caldwell’s actions are very serious and the National Park Service is in the process of considering disciplinary action against Mr. Caldwell that is consistent with due process," he added. "In the interim, the National Park Service determined that it would be in the best interest of the organization to temporarily reassign him to duties outside of the regional office, while disciplinary action is considered.
"It is unfortunate that these actions have called into question the judgment of a leader with an otherwise strong record of public service," Mr. Crosson said.
During his reassignment, Mr. Caldwell will work under the Park Service's deputy director, Mike Reynolds, said Mr. Crosson, although he didn't know specifically what the regional director would be doing. Pending his reassigment, the regional office will be run by its deputy directors, he said.
The Northeast Region encompasses more than 80 units of the National Park System, including Acadia National Park, Valley Forge National Historical Park, Shenandoah National Park, and Valley Forge National Historical Park, as well as 21 National Heritage Areas,
The investigation was launched in March after allegations were made that Mr. Caldwell had traveled to Cape Cod National Seashore "under the guise of official business when in fact he went there on vacation." The investigators also determined, and the regional director acknowledged, that he accepted free housing in a rental cottage owned by a Park Service employee, a violation of federal regulations that both prohibit supervisors from accepting gifts from subordinates and subordinates from giving their supervisors gifts.
Along with confirming the allegations against Mr. Caldwell, the OIG investigators concluded that the Park Service poorly monitors its employees' travel expenses. Peggy O'Dell, who was deputy director for operations before retiring from the agency this past summer, was supposed to approve travel vouchers of regional directors, the report said. However, she had an assistant handle that task on her behalf, the report said.
"O’Dell said she had taken it on faith that the travelers who submitted their authorizations and vouchers to her were being honest, and she acknowledged that the NPS process for reviewing these documents could be improved," the investigators wrote. "She said that one way to improve the process would be for the regional directors to post their leave information in a clearly visible location. She also said that NPS needed to address the practicality of making high-level managers such as herself responsible for reviewing every travel voucher for multiple direct reports."
The bottom line, Ms. O'Dell told the investigators, was that "that the entire process depended on travelers telling the truth when submitting their travel documents."
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Comments
What is noteworthy here isn't what he did. It is that he did it during a time of heightened scrutiny of the NPS in light of all the mgmt scandals. These guys cover each other so he wasn't too concerned about getting busted. If there is a swamp that needs draining, it is the NPS culture of arrogance and entitlement. They flip their noses at pesky rules. I wonder who he crosssed that threw him under the bus. Probably didn't carry enough water for Jarvis.
From my own dealings with NER staff, particularly of the Boomer generation, I've gotten the impression that there's a culture of entitlement among them. They've expressed some bizarre opinions about what they're entitled to as employees, that they deserve the same perks that -- for example -- corporate executives often receive.
Would a lower level employee be "reassigned" or would they simply be canned? This guy needs to be sent packing. Pronto.
If, however, he is reassigned, it should be to cleaning restrooms at Tuzigoot or separating recyclable items from the garbage bins at Anacostia.
Another scandal to mark the administration of Director Jarvis. The man comitted fraud in the submission of his dishonest vouchers. He should be fired and not reassigned.
Mr. Caldwell will be sent to Washington to work with Mr. Reynolds. Did you they are both Buddies. Reynolds work with Caldwell in Philadelphia. This will all blow over and nothing will happen to Caldwell. They all know when they are doing this kind of activity that it will all blow over. First it went to the Inspector General then they past the Buck to The Attorney General then they pass the buck back to the Park service to take care of their own. Caldwell was also involve in the Valley Forge Hiring Scam when all the people put in for a position that were Qualified none of them received the job and The Qualified never received an interview. The job of Buildings Foreman was given to a Non-Qualified Tractor driver, Grass cutter, tree worker and people who were in the Building Trades for up to 30 years were never considered. Until you Fire these people it will be businees as uasual. How do I konw, Mr. Caldwell was my Boss at Valley Forge Park and I was the VP of the Union.
From my perspective, this is awful news for the National Park Service. Personally, it saddens me to read about the very poor judgement of an otherwise dedicated and honorable leader. Mike Caldwell was and is a great RD and there are plenty of us who are rooting for him to get through this in a fair and reasonable manner with consideration to his more than a decade long proven track record of public service. Recap - Not forgiving the infraction - just looking at the full picture.
Well said....
You've got some strange notions. There's nothing dedicated or honorable about using your position to steal. This automatically disqualifies you as a great RD, and only someeone born yesterday wouldn't be skeptical of his long record of public service. The idea of this person posing as a leader or god forbid disciplining his inferiors is appalling. For someone making over $150,000 a year in a cush job to "start" abusing his power and do things like this reveals everything you need to now about the real Mike Caldwell, and it's ugly. The fact that he won't suffer any meaningful consequences shows the real character of the people responsible for disciplining him. The fact that you're willing to speak up and defend him over this shows how ridiculous this whole charade has become. I spent nearly a decade working seasonally and the year I find a permanent job with the NPS is the same year we all find out there's corruption all the way to the top of the service, I'll be lucky if the American people don't clean house across the board after enough of this despicable behavior. Great job Mike Caldwell, we're all getting to see even more of the "full picture" of the NPS and we look awful, precisely because of people like him. People like rose to the top because of people like you seeing what they want and looking the other way when it comes to the rest.
i have to agree with SorryNotSorry. He's a great RD. That's no excusing the indiscretion. It's merely acknowledging that his contributions and his otherwise clean record should not be ignored. Good people make mistakes. We can agree to disagree.
The Full Picture, He cooked the Books on Time Keeping , That's automatic Firing. He included his Family by Defrauding the Taxpayer. Instead of sending Mr.Caldwell to Washington to work as a special assistant to the NPS Deputy Director Mike Reynolds, he should be sent to work as a custodian until he is Fired. This is what he used to do at Valley Fordge Park. If anyone put in for a position that would interfere with his selection and he went against Protocal , he would put that person in a Custodian position as Punishment as to say how dare you interfere . By sending Mr.Caldwell to work with Mr.Reynolds is like sending him to La La Land. Did you know thet They both both worked togeather at Northeast Region. What are Friends for. He will be taken care of greatly while still collecting that nice 159,000. On another note , this is the same man who last year at this time was involved in paying of an employee a lots of money so they would not go to court to espose the Hiring scam at Valley Forge national Park when all the Qualified people on the Cert were never going to be concidered. Only one on the cert received that Position of Building Maintenance Foreman, his friend the least Qualified. Oh yes the Inspector General was involved in this too. Remember the IG frequently declines to prosecute IG referrals. Even clear cut cases of wrondoing with no explanation. Maybe that agency shoul be abolished.
long record of not being caught you mean!
I'm sure if i did something of this nature.. I would not only lose my job, I'd be punished to the fullest extent of the law. You have disgraced not only yourself but the people of the United states of america...We call them TAXPAYERS!
The question: Would a lower level employee be "reassigned" or would they simply be canned? is completely relevant.
Shouldn't there be EQUAL treatment of employees at all levels? Perhaps if it was a less egregious situation or an honest mistake, it could be forgiven. But for someone at his level to be handed a waiver for behavior he admits was wrong is wrong.
He KNEW what he was doing. But did it anyway while hoping he wouldn't be caught.
He was and now the penalty should be same as it certainly would be if it had been a GS-7 ranger or clerk. Anything less would be a serious injustice.
He's probably the best boss I've ever had. Sure, this is disappointing news but I still respect him and his meaningful contributions to the NPS. As far as I'm concerned, he's still my boss.
No reason to mitigate intentional wrongdoings of senior managers who blatantly scoff at accountability and ethical behavior. This is a poor reflection on those of us who choose to behave otherwise.
He should try to hang on for the new interior secretary to decide since also violated travel regulations by flying his special ops team to work on his house in Montana. #swampthing
As a long-time NPS employee, this behavior is another example of a generation of leaders whose sense of entitlement is no longer being accepted and that group of "good old boys" is nearly gone. I would NOT put Mike Reynolds in that group. He is part of the change this organization needs. Being friends with someone does not necessarily make you incapable of making the right decision with regard to descipine.
With respect to discipline of all employees being equal; Google Douglas Factors. Treatment is never equal because in the realm of discipline, there are numerous factors that get taken into account before discipline is ever issued. Treatment is never EQUAL because of that but it is always FAIR. Admission is a mitigating factor and Caldwell is smart enough to know that.
He is a good Regional Director in many ways. He empowers his people in all the best ways, he fights to protect parks, he doesn't take BS from people who try to be too bureaucratic, etc. BUT, in my humble opinion, he can never lead other leaders again. Loss of public trust (and that includes the trust of his subordinates) is hard to win back, and will compromise his effectiveness and credi bility permanently.
This is not a "jarvis" thing. We are all each responsible for our own actions and choices. I've worked with and for Jarvis for 30 years. Nothing about who he is or what he does overrides my personal sense of right and wrong. Caldwell owns this one squarely. Let'a put a new regional director back in Philly and get back to work. There's a lot to do and time is wasting.
Anonymous 1:24am Dec 24--
As a recovering academic and only 8 year employee of NPS, your first sentence mirrors my experience. I see 2 pretty distinct cultures within NPS. I read about and occasionally interact with an older culture risen from the (LE) ranger ranks, tolerant of bullying & harassment & sexism & informal perks of the job. I'm willing to posit that those folks may have done many positive things for the park service in the past, but that was before my time. There's another culture of folks in NPS, often coming out of universities with MS or PhDs that simply wouldn't tolerate the harassment documented at GRCA and elsewhere (I know of 2 other big cases that haven't made the news). Aside from what they learned for their science or history degrees, they also learned a culture of women as colleagues & equals, and learned accountability. The cultures don't split out perfectly by age & education: I know exceptions in both directions, and one of the cases that hasn't come out involved PhD folks with no excuse. I'm fortunate that the parks & programs I routinely deal with are mostly in this second culture (which also makes the occasional exception especially jarring). My impression is that individual parks tend to be one culture or another (or something else), but not mixtures of the cultures. That suggests an effect of actual leadership at the level of parks or programs setting standards & norms for their parks. I don't deal with regional offices or WASO outside of the directorate I'm a peon in, so I don't have observations there.
As for Caldwell, I think he should get the same punishment anyone else should, whether dismissal or leave without pay. That's not $100 here or there when it would have taken almost $100 in his and an admin's time to set up the travel right in the system, or an extra $200 on a flight that saves him 4 hours of his time. What I read was flat out abuse and entitlement.
Contra Al Runte, I'm not optimistic that the new administration will be a positive change. There's the obvious optics issue for cleaning up the parts of NPS with issues of sexual harassment & assault, let alone bullying; that cleanup may drop in priority. But from my perspective the blunt force freeze on civilian federal employees, with the idea of reducing the size of the government workforce by not replacing employees who retire or leave, could very well be a disaster. NPS FTE equivalent employees are already down substantially from the peak in 2003, even though visitation is up (the units added in the last decade have very few employees and thus have little effect on the squeeze). When a park's chief of facilities retires, pretty clearly that position needs to be filled: someone has to deal with FMSS and cyclical maintenence. If this freeze works like previous hiring freezes, the position will be open only to current employees: effectively a transfer or promotion, keeping the spirit of reducing the employee count by not hiring replacements. Such "inverse musical chairs", where the chairs remain but the number of players decreases, leads to parks scavenging from each other, and the parks with the most problems and least glamor or living conditions stuck with vacant positions. And, I don't have a lot of faith that a brute-force freeze won't cause a trainwreck with seasonals & term employees, as they aren't "status candidates" but parks can't run without them. While I think it's unlikely that parks won't have seasonals next summer, I do see lots of term positions lapsing, greatly affecting regions like PWR that use more terms than career hires. To be clear: I think that repeated 3-4 year term positions are abusive, I think that seasonals and "subject to furlough" 13-15pp positions are abusive, and I don't like core operations being performed by volunteers. But a freeze on positions prevents converting terms to career positions, and squeezes park operations toward more use of volunteers for operations work instead of enhanced visitor programs. Add in the almost complete dysfunction of the current HR hiring process in WASO and most regions, and I see a very bumpy next few years.
He should be fired immediatel, arrested and tried just the same as if he were in the private sector. The good old boys club does it again. Until people like him are knocked off their pedestals this kind of behavior will continue to take place.
"considering disciplinary action"
Wow, says volumes about the leadership (or lack there-of). My sympathies to the ethical people still working for the NPS.
The damage is done and he has owned it. Sure, he should be appropriately disciplined but quite frankly, I'm rooting for him as he has otherwise, been an asset to the NPS.
No one is perfect. I believe the "good" he has done for NPS definitely outweighs this obvious lapse in judgment. People make mistakes everyday including all of you negative commenters. It appeared that he accepted responsibility when he was confronted. That's commendable. As a person in law enforcement, I'm not surprised the United States Attorneys Office decided that criminal prosecution was not appropriate in this case.
No, Bottom Line. The bottom line should be dismissal. This is exactly what got Trump elected, gibberish to the effect that any bureaucrat should get a pass. How is any bureaucrat "an asset" when he or she steals from the public trust? So he "owned" his stealing. What does that mean, if not that any bureaucrat is entitled to steal?
i said he should be appropriately disciplined. I disagree with dismissal. He has had a stellar career with no past disclinary issues. He also admitted wrongdoing. These things are always factored into final decisions when doling out discipline - no matter where you fall in the food chain.
Not sure who the commenters are who claim he is/was a great boss. Perhaps you are GS-12 and above. My experince was the opposite, he was the worst boss I ever had in 35 years of service. Everything done to advance his career to the detriment of the park and its employees, in particular to us grunts. This incident seems totally in keeping with his character rather than an aberration.
Bottom Line - don't forget the feeding frenzy of the Jarvis Haters. No shades of grey, only black/white, hate/love stuff.
Rick B., as you will recall, I wrote here in defense of Jarvis's right to author a book "without permission." This is different, and now, in the form of Michelle and Bottom Line, has taken on the character of a "campaign." Okay, I'll bite. The "defense" here rests on the premise that when confronted, Mr. Caldwell confessed. But what does that say about the integrity of our government, if not that the burden of proof rests on us? Unless you "catch us," we get to slide.
Years ago, in another life, I was denied tenure at the University of Washington. When I finally found out what had happened, the excuse was the one offered here. When confronted, we confessed, if not to any crime. Oh, no? Since when is file tampering not a crime? Well, to be a crime, the university responded, you have to catch us in the act. Since you didn't--and then the statute of limitations expired--you have no case.
That is how I read Michelle and Bottom Line. A "stellar" career, was it? "No one is perfect," they say. He accepted responsibility "when confronted." A "commendable" act that, too. No, the commendable act is to act with integrity. They instead defend "catch me if you can."
And you wonder why, in Peggy Noonan's words, your government today is despised? Not disliked, but yes, despised? For all the preaching about equality and diversity, this is what we get? Catch me if you can! If you cheat, we will openly condemn you, but if we do it, that's okay. We get to apologize and say we are commendable. After all, we run the show.
Over on Fox, Lou Dobbs is counting down the days to the inaugural. And believe me, so am I.
I'm not familiar with Mr. Caldwell or his long tenure with the National Park Service, and I don't take a black and white view of someone being all good or all bad. Even considering his work history and prior performance as a mitigating factor, there are so many aggravating factors. In his position, he is expected to be held to a higher standard. He is a senior leader with substantial public contacts and fiduciary duties. His position requires a high level of trust both from his superiors as well as subordinates. This misconduct was repeated over several years, and he was fully aware he was engaging in misconduct when it happened. This fraud was possible in part because he abused the trust of the people who were approving his travel. How can he be trusted in the future? How can he do his job without this trust?
It seems like I remember a travel freeze occurring during this timeframe. I'm sure it feels nice as one of the rank and file to learn that while your travel was cancelled, a regional director may have been funnelling travel resources off for his own personal gain.
He shouldn't be held to the same standard as a GS-5 secretary who would likely get a notice of proposed removal; he is expected by his position and the authority coming with it to be held to a higher standard, not the same or lower. His prior career accomplishments would have to be beyond stellar to outweigh the aggravating factors.
Al. I'm familiar with your experiences at the UW, both the many recountings you've made of your side here and also what is available to those of us in the greater Seattle area and on the internet. Sorry to disappoint, but my comments in this thread were not directed to or about you; the wandering detail of your comments about you are then immaterial.
Green Thumb - your comments make sense.
RD Calwell committed fraud to the tune of $17,000, and only after he was caught did he admit it. There is no way, regardless of how good a boss he may have been in the past that someone who steals thousands of $$$ from their employer, and the public should be kept on in any capacity. He should be trying to negotiate a deal to pay back the value of his theft and exit government service either by dismissal or resignation, not retirement, forfeiture of his pension should be part of the deal.
The cherry on top of the Jarvis cake. Of course he would leave us all with another scandal, underscoring his amazing failure of leadership. However, it is also on us, for we allowed it and constantly defended the train which was happening in front of our own eyes. Ultimately, like the outcome of elections, its our responsibility to insist upon credible, honest and competent government officials. We all need to raise the bar in all we do...
I totally agree with you Green Thumb. He is a Regional Director and should be held to the highest standard. I really do not believe that his previous career is the issue here. The issue is that he comitted fraud. His did this knowingly and only admitted the fraud when confronted with the facts. He should be fired. He has admitted his guilt. What is the message we send to all of our lower level employees when a SES Regional Director committs fraud and is given a slap on the wrist with a reassignment. Either we have standards or we do not. We expect our managers to be honest. When they are not the entire agency is damaged. There is only one solution to this problem. Immediate dismissal for Mr. Caldwell.
I don't know Mr. Caldwell or anything about him other than what I've read here. But I have to take exception to the idea of giving him a pass for this conduct. In my experience, and I'm sure others have observed the same, when someone is caught in something like this, it's usually not the first or only time it has happened.
What is different is only that they were caught . . . . this time. How many other skeletons are hiding in the closets of his career?
Perhaps a question that should be asked is: How would Mr. Caldwell deal with a subordinate -- particularly one at field level -- who had done the same sort of thing? If Caldwell would dismiss another for conduct unbecoming, then shouldn't he dismiss himself?
The swamp, Mr. Stronski. The swamp. Drainage is set to begin in 25 days. Now, let's hold the President-Elect to it.
Travel per-diem is supposed to be paid whenever the employee must spend the night away from their duty station, but that depends on how 'duty station' is defined for your work group. There is also a tiered system where management get much more per night than the rank & file. During my career, 'backcountry' rangers got nothing, while trail crew got $15/night.
There was an Asst. Superintendent at Olympic working on dam removal planning decades ago. He got some kind of paper transfer to the Denver Service Center, but remained in Port Angeles and drew high-roller (then >$100/day) 'travel per-diem' for being away from his 'duty station'.
Still, I'd have to say nepotism, cronyism and preferential hiring were the most common form of NPS corruption that I saw.
Holding the Tweeter Elect accountable for anything is going to be a nifty trick. We've elected a pathological liar with an ego bigger than Yellowstone. The real question is how long will it take before people who voted for this wreck will begin to realize that they made a horrible mistake.
As for Mr. Caldwell, he should be fired. Period. Like our choice for the White House, an honest, decent person will remain that way through thick or thin. So will those who are not. Caldwell was finally caught, and I'll bet a hamburger or two that there have been countless other times he has gotten away with shenaigans of similar nature.
The idea that people should be held accountable doesn't come with exceptions. And remember when holding people accountable that there is a huge (Yuge?) difference between a mistake and a crime. In the case of a crime, the person knows it is wrong but does it anyway. Mr. Caldwell has admitted he knew what he was doing was a crime.
Lee, Just to keep things fair and balanced could you now tell us what should be done with HILLARY?
Lee, what do you mean by "Tweeter Elect?" Here in Seattle, I am surrounded by people who tweet, and who think me a fossil because I don't. For that matter, I did not have a computer until 1996, nor do I have a smart phone now. I have a flip top from 2005, and it is virtually falling apart.
Fine, call Mr. Trump a "pathological liar," but don't forget to include Hillary Clinton. And don't forget her talk about breaking the "glass ceiling," which in her estimation was higher than Mount Everest.
We have a job to do these next four years, and it will not be done by casting disparagement on the President-Elect, or anyone else. It's over, Lee, and good riddance. At least now I will able to write critically about the national parks without being called a so and so in return.
As for tweeting, I might pick it up myself. Yes, I am always a late adopter, but hey, the President-Elect is on to something. In my day, the press could be counted on to get it right at least the majority of the time. We historians were still skeptical of the press, of course, in full recognition of the fact that it was still a business bent on "selling" the news.
So, Mr. Trump has joined the club. Why wait for a "reporter" to get it wrong? Misquotes in history abound, starting with "If you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen them all." No, the proper quote is: "A tree is a tree. How many more do you need to look at?" The Sierra Club, bent on embarassing Mr. Reagan, treated him just like they're now treating Trump.
Only Mr. Reagan was not the problem. The US senator who prolonged the redwood hearings (and thus the cutting in Redwood Creek) was Scoop Jackson (D-Washington State). The Interior Secretary who wanted to dam Grand Canyon was Stewart L. Udall (D-Arizona). The US representative who recently privatized more than a square mile of Olympic National Park was Norman Dicks (D-Washington State). The US President who just awarded 286,000 acres of the public lands to wind and solar development was Barack Obama (D-Illinois).
Are we having fun yet? I'll tell you what isn't fun--noting how many commentators on this site have absolutely no knowledge of American History.
Trump won (and I predicted it) because he touched a nerve. People in this country were sick and tired of The Establishment telling them how to vote. And what to think. No thinking allowed. Just find a euphemism, and play it for all it's worth. When challenged, create a safe zone, and disallow all dissent.
As for the national parks, if you want chapter and verse, history will be glad to oblige. It will take historians a few years to examine the records, but so far nothing in Mr. Obama's administration stands out. Eight years ago, he freely blamed Mr. Bush. Well, what did he do with his eight?
History will ask, and ask it of Mr. Trump. It's just that he hasn't even started yet, and already been deemed a failure--"a wreck," as you put it here. I dunno. Anyone who gets elected president of the United States has to have something on the ball, if now to know how the country communicates past the prejudice of the press. Fossil that I am, I still believe in the press, if only the 15 percent that still believes in telling readers what really happened--and why.
Well put, Al. Add promotion by politics, rather than by exam and qualification - the curse of the NPS for the last 30 years - and miserably low budgets, and this is what the result will be.
IMHO, history will treat President Obama much better than his contemporary critics do. IMHO, history will treat Donald Trump harshly, along with Nixon, Harding, and similar past icons of corruption.
None of which has anything to do with the thread topic of Caldwell other than the general label of corruption.
Corruption has become so ingrained in American government at virtually all levels -- except perhaps in the smallest of towns where it would be easily detected and removed -- that someone like Caldwell is just a minor player swimming around in a large and ugly swamp.
The late and unlamented election was a choice between two liars. Trouble is that one was simply a normally dishonest career politician and the other is an outright pathological liar who apparently has no concept whatsoever of truth or fiction. One was immoral, the other amoral. There is a very large difference.
The only thing anyone can say for certain right now is that, for better or worse, we're all gonna find out what happens next. I just hope we're all here in four years to look back and decide which it was. Hang on because it's probably going to be a really wild ride.
In the meantime, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Cool Kwanza and the New Year will be good to all of us no matter what happens in that place called D.C.
T.A. - after the millions and millions of dollars your side has spent "investigating" her nothing has risen to the level of indictment. Why don't you "do" something like forget her, let her settle into retirement, and find a new fetish to distract the masses with?
Of course, it is an unwritten law in politics that we don't indict our own, which I believe this story is all about, yes? Indict Secretary Clinton? Fire Mr. Caldwell? Sure, and just what fantasy should we believe in next?
The report only talked about the total cost of the trips... It said nothing about the fradulent charges. This article improperly referred to the $11,500 as covering the "nicer" accomodations, even though that was the total cost and not the fraudulent cost. His actions should not be tolerated, but it should also be reported properly.
I wonder how much the extra charges were?
Rick B is wrong. This incident appears to be right in line with Director Jarvis' culture of corruption, and the so-called feeding frenzy against him was fully justified. The many superintendent scandals during his tenure made it clear that his cronies could get away with almost anything. Caldwell should be fired, but is now working for Reynolds, who one poster insists is trying to right the ship. I hope he is right, but have my doubts.
Mr. Caldwell should be fired immediately. Any federal employee who travels knows the rules and he certainly did at his level. He is an arrogant person and he knew exactly what he was doing. In my opinion he is a thief and who knows how long this has been going on for prior to 2011. if this is swept under the carpet and the penalty is anything less than firing than I guess this should be lesson to all the good honest workers that crime does pay!
I disagree with most who are posting on this page. Caldwell took his family on travel with him and fraudulently charged the government. There is no excusing his actions which deserve the appropriate punishment. He has admitted wrongdoing and has already repaid the government for all costs associated with his indiscretionS. He was freaking stupid but termination is not warranted. This guy is not the typical above the law good ol' boy. The NPS is better with him than without. Suspension and reassignment are more fitting for the crime.
tomp2 ---
That sounds like an informed voice of experience, and mirrors much of what I've heard from career, seasonal, and temp NPSers of my acquaintance.
The problem is this: all too often when “waste, fraud, or abuse” cases are reported to the IG’s office, they often don’t investigate and they don’t pursue discipline---especially in Whistleblower cases. And if the Office of Special Counsel investigates a case and finds someone guilty—even if they are found to be guilty “beyond any reasonable doubt”---the OSC has limited options:
1. It can recommend “disciplinary” action by the guilty person’s agency…but that usually can’t involve more than three weeks of suspension without pay. In addition, the appropriate agency could “discipline” the person by reassignment but that is a decision of the agency---not the OSC. And all too often--- in the NPS--- when people are transferred, they are transferred to fairly nice desk jobs or to better parks, and not to less desirable locations or less interesting jobs.
2. On the other hand, if the OSC wants to pursue more discipline than just three weeks of suspention without pay, it can present a case to the MSPB—the Merit System Protection Board—but that takes a lot more time and energy, and the OSB currently doesn’t have the budget or staff to pursue many cases. Consequently, they default to “settlement agreements” in which the guilty person’s agency admits no fault, the guilty person admits no fault, and “discipline” is left to the discretion of the guilty person’s agency…which again can can impose a three week suspensoin without pay ….but nothing more unless a full blown case is presented to the MSPB.
At www.schundler.net you can see how these options played out. In my FOIA case, the IG’s office did investigate, they recommended prosecution of the Superintendent who had suddenly retired, but the federal prosecuting attorney chose not to prosecute. In that case, the guilty Superintendent had been wasting tens of thousands of dollars---and possibly up to $200,000 in one year---and suffered no penalties. Two years later in our Whistleblower case against the next Superintendent at Mesa Verde NP, the IG’s office did everything to frustrate the case. Eventually the OSC investigated and pursued a settlement with the NPS---but in the end, the guilty Superintendent probably received no more than a hidden slap on the wrist or a few weeks of suspension without pay.
The NPS doesn’t enter into settlement agreements unless they and their employee really are “guilty beyond any reasonable doubt.” Nevertheless, in far too many cases, people guilty of violating federal laws and regulations, and people who have retaliated inappropriately against others or abused others simply are not held responsible, and usually suffer no real punishment or significant discipline.
This all could change if a new standard was implemented. It would be a standard which would have to be communicated effectively and enforced through examples. And it would have to publicize that
(1) violations of laws and regulations simply would not be tolerated at any level, and
(2) Superintendents, Regional Directors, the Director, and the IG’s office will stop protecting and defending guilty employees and will start helping in their prosecution.
They're caught alright, but the crimes have all too often been swept under the rug with no real consequences to the offenders. From my experience, there's a lot of truth in Schundler's post. This lack of accountability for top managers degrades the entire Service, and must be institutionally changed.
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