A new Interior Department Inspector General report details serious shenanigans at the Minerals Management Service office responsible for the "royalty-in-kind" program, including the acceptance of gifts from industry, cronyism, and "a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity," including illicit drug use and sexual relations with energy company representatives. (It even sounds worse than the Ohio Attorney General's office under Marc Dann.) . As the Washington Post reports:
Investigators from the Interior Department's inspector general's office said more than a dozen employees, including the former director of the oil royalty program, took meals, ski trips, sports tickets and golf outings from industry representatives. The report alleges that the former director, Gregory W. Smith, also netted more than $30,000 from improper outside work. . . .MMS officials are supposed to maintain "arms length" relationships with energy company officials yet, as the report noted, "Sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms-length."n the report released yesterday, investigators said they "discovered a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" in which employees accepted gratuities "with prodigious frequency." The report cited one e-mail from a Shell Pipeline representative asking a woman in the royalty office to attend "tailgating festivities" at a Houston Texans football game: "You're invited . . . have you and the girls meet at my place at 6am for bubble baths and final prep. Just kidding."
Besides Shell, the energy company employees mentioned in the report worked for Chevron, Hess and Gary-Williams Energy. The social outings detailed in the report included alcohol-, cocaine- and marijuana-filled parties where certain employees of the Minerals Management Service were nicknamed the "MMS Chicks" by the energy employees. The companies paid for federal workers to attend football and baseball games, PGA Tour events, Colorado ski trips, paintball outings and "treasure hunts," investigators found.
In response, Interior Department Dirk Kempthorne is promising reform.
Am I correctly reading this to say the federal employees were the girls and the energy company employees that were their sex partners were the boys? That is a switch from the usual scandal.
The more power government has, the more it pays to try to corrupt it. And since government has the power to put its competitors out of business, it has a lot of power.
I love how people in positions of authority pledge to make reform AFTER the delivery of an official report that was many months in the making. No rush, guys.
Interesting observation. Now that the federal gov't owns or controls the mortgage market, and may soon with the auto industry, we can expect more of this, I suppose.
I think I'll ready my application to return to gov't.
What's with all the nickel and dime stuff at Interior?
Second of all, am I the only amused by the conscientious investigative bureaucrat who wants to require that sexual relationships be "arm's length"? Surely there is some more felicitous phrasing that would describe goodsex and differentiate it from the sexcrime at issue here.
That must have been a long time ago, before the quickie. That reminds me of a joke about the priest who went into town...
Global Warming Decision
Here's an interesting match of last names:
From the White House website
I haven't done any deep-drive searching, but the surname's relatively rare.
How many pages of the Kama Sutra are devoted to proving the contrary?
Nick
A Jefferson or a Cunningham I can understand. They made some fairly decent money before they got caught. But with these guys it's as if something far beyond profit motive drove the corruption.