Joe Carson asks for your help with OSC & MSPB Investigation

Date:	Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:57:21 -0400
To:	jpcarson@tds.net
From:	"Joe Carson" <jpcarson@tds.net>  View Contact Details   Add Mobile Alert
Subject:	DOJ IG and OSC FOIA enforcement

To Whom It May Concern

I suspect that if only a few people contact the relevant Congressional Committees - House Government Reform and Oversight and Senate Judiciary Committees - Congress will task DOJ to ascertain in how many and which FOIA suits the Federal Judge made the requisite finding to trigger an OSC investigation, if brought to OSC's attention, which anyone can do, with no statute of limitations apparently.

If you are interested in joining a petition to Congress, that it direct DOJ to do this research and make the results available, please let me know.

Joe Carson
865-300-5831

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August 24, 2007

Mr. Glenn Fine, Inspector General
U.S. Department of Justice
Investigations Division
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Room 4706
Washington, DC 20530

<oig.hotline@usdoj.gov>

Subject: US Office of Special Counsel’s apparent failure to comply with its singular FOIA enforcement responsibilities merits DOJ’s attention and action.

Dear Mr. Fine,

The US Office of Special Counsel (OSC) <www.osc.gov> is a small, independent agency created in 1989.  About half of its 110 employees are licensed attorneys.  I contend that employee for employee, year for year, and statutory obligation for statutory obligation, OSC is likely the most lawbreaking agency in the history of the Republic.

Erin McDonnell is OSC’s Associate Special Counsel for Legal Counsel and Policy.  She has been at OSC since mid-1980's (when it was still part of MSPB) and has held her current position since 1992.  She is a combination General Counsel, Inspector General, and Chief FOIA Officer at OSC - despite the obvious conflicts of interest holding those roles entail.

I suspect, based on my experience with OSC’s lawbreaking, OSC’s responses to my FOIA’s, OSC’s public records, and OSC’s annual reports, that she has directed OSC simply “dump” - without the proper investigation and/or without making the report with the required findings and determinations - 40 or more complaints OSC has received since 1989, per 5 USC 1216(a)(3), that cited the requisite finding of a Federal Judge, per 5 USC 552(a)(4)(F).   I am trying to get to the bottom of it in Carson v. OSC, docket no. 06-1834, in Federal District Court in District of Columbia, despite the various roadblocks she has erected in past year.

DOJ is charged, in 5 USC 552(e), with some government-wide responsibilities for FOIA compliance.   By 5 USC 552(e)(5), it is charged to comply an annual report of agency FOIA litigation results.  However the law does not require it to specify when or how often Federal Judges in FOIA suits make the specific finding necessary, by 5 USC 552(a)(4)(F), for OSC to conduct an investigation (if someone files a complaint with OSC citing it, another weak link that the FOIA reform bill, passed in the House and passed out of Committee in the Senate, fixes by making the Attorney General responsible to report such findings to OSC).

However, the current law put no statute of limitations of OSC’s conducting such an investigation and no limitations on whom can file a complaint with OSC, citing the requisite Federal Judge finding.

My point is that if you and/or someone else in the Justice Department directed its Office of Information and Privacy to determine FOIA cases in past 10 years in which such a Federal Judge finding was made, it should be fairly easy to do.  Then it could make this information available so that anyone (including DOJ officials) could file complaints with OSC citing them and then monitor OSC’s compliance with 5 USC 552(a)(4)(F) in conducting the investigations and documenting the results. 

I respectfully suggest DOJ taking this action would be consistent with its statutory duty at 5 USC 552(e)(5) “to encourage agency compliance with this section.”

I am also contacting DOJ’s Office of Information and Privacy with this request.  I am bringing it to the attention of DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility as I think this situation merits its consideration as it is a DOJ attorney, Judith Kidwell, who is, perhaps unknowingly, aiding  OSC’s creating roadblock after roadblock to stymie my efforts to ascertain the facts about OSC’s compliance with 5 USC 552(a)(4)(F) in the pending FOIA suit.  Additionally, I am bringing it to the attention of relevant Congressional Committees and organizations that are advocating for reform to the current FOIA law.

I have attached my recent appeal to Ms. McDonnell of OSC’s non-responsive reply to my second FOIA request for this information as it provides more basis in fact and law to this situation.

Respectfully,


Joe Carson, PE