Many Panels Watching Homeland Security

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

By Patrick Yoest, Congressional Quarterly Today

February 7, 2007

Comptroller General David M. Walker and Homeland Security Department Inspector General Richard L. Skinner had a busy day, testifying before two House committees investigating the department's management.

The pair will be together again Thursday, when they talk to another House committee about the department's procurement.

Although this week's hearings mark the start of the most vigorous oversight of the department since its formation, the panels' efforts are overlapping and inevitably repetitive.

On Wednesday, Walker and Skinner delivered the same prepared remarks to the House Homeland Security Committee that they prepared for the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. Both addressed what they perceive as a lack of transparency throughout the department.

And Thursday's hearing in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee will cover the same territory as the panels that convened Wednesday plan to address in hearings next week.

"It's a kind of rough division of labor," said David E. Price, D-N.C., chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee. Although his staff works closely with the Homeland Security Committee, Price added, it does not enjoy the same cooperation with the Oversight and Government Reform panel.

The scrambled homeland security jurisdiction has been a concern since the department was authorized in 2002 (PL 107-296). Even before the House Homeland Security Committee was created, some in and outside Congress worried that giving shares of Homeland Security jurisdiction to multiple authorizing committees would not lead to productive oversight.

While the three committees grilling Walker and Skinner this week have not clashed over legislative turf, there is little indication of cooperation on oversight. They plan a combined total of 15 oversight hearings during this week and next.

"What would make sense was for the leadership to divide up areas of concentration," said Scott Bates, vice president of the Center for National Policy and a former House Homeland Security Committee aide.

Peter T. King of New York, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, said overlapping oversight hearings are symptomatic of larger homeland security jurisdiction problems. King and other House Republicans contend that a House-passed bill (HR 1) to implement additional recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would not address that panel's suggestion of a "single, principal point of oversight and review for homeland security."

"I've spoken to a number of homeland security officials who say they are testifying before too many different committees," King said.

The House Homeland Security panel has an agreement with the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to share jurisdiction over emergency management and maritime security. But it is competing with the Energy and Commerce panel over emergency communications and chemical security and with the Judiciary panel over border security.

But some contend that this week's dueling hearings are a logical convergence of the legitimate work of three committees.

"It is absolutely appropriate," said the department's former inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin. "The more oversight, the better, and the more the key committees get the real story from independent watchdogs, the better."

The more-is-better approach was evident Wednesday, when Skinner and Walker fanned the frustrations of Homeland Security authorizers and appropriators who have complained of a persistent lack of access to the department. The witnesses testified that the department's habit of delaying disclosure of reports and sending attorneys to sit in on interviews with department officials frustrated investigations, leading Walker's Government Accountability Office (GAO) to label the department "high-risk."

William O. Jenkins Jr., the GAO's director of homeland security and justice issues, told the Appropriations panel that a lack of access to the department left him unsure of how Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff distributes first-responder grants.

The Oversight and Government Reform panel will likely hear similar complaints. Skinner and Walker told the Homeland Security Committee they are concerned about the department's multibillion-dollar border technology procurement, which Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., will examine Thursday.

Waxman said he plans yearlong oversight of the department. "It's only the beginning," he said.

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