UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY WASHINGTON, D.C. 20460
THE INSPECTOR GENERAL January 25, 2006 The President The White House Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear Mr. President: On March 3, 2006, I will resign my position as Inspector General of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and retire from Federal service. It has been an honor to serve both you and President Clinton since my appointment as Inspector General in October 1997. I began work at EPA in 1990 and have had the privilege of working with talented professionals, both within EPA and within the Office of Inspector General (OIG), dedicated to EPA’s human health and environmental mission. I am particularly proud of the OIG staff and their successes in working with the Agency to improve EPA processes and programs. During my tenure as Inspector General, the OIG strived to better serve the Administration, the Congress, and the American people. In 1999, we began program evaluation work, expanding beyond traditional audit work, to assess the results of EPA’s environmental programs. Since then, EPA has implemented many of our recommendations to help make the air cleaner, the water purer, and the land better protected. The OIG has worked closely with EPA to ensure that taxpayer dollars are well spent and properly managed, and was an instrumental partner in helping EPA become one of the first Agencies to “get to green” in Financial Management on your Management Agenda Scorecard. Inspectors General play a vital role in improving government operations, and I have had the honor of working with Inspectors General from across the Federal Government as a member of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency (PCIE), resulting in some of my proudest accomplishments. I led a team of Federal Inspectors General, Government Accountability Office, state, and local auditors to produce a Guide to Opportunities to Improve Grant Accountability. The guide will help to ensure that the nearly $450 billion the Federal Government spends annually on grants produces real benefits for the public. It illustrates what can be accomplished when auditors work together across government lines. As Chair of the PCIE Human Resources Committee, I helped create a leadership program to develop career employees to become future leaders in the Inspector General community. As I conclude nearly 35 years of public service, I hope I have successfully demonstrated that career civil servants can provide you and future Presidents an excellent pool of candidates for Inspectors General positions due to our experience in government and the non-partisan nature of the positions. Unfortunately, I fear the pay inequities that were created with the implementation of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2004 will make it increasingly difficult to convince career employees to accept IG appointments in the future. I hope your Administration will work with Congress to address this issue and to encourage qualified career employees to serve as Inspectors General in the future. Thank you for the opportunity to serve. Sincerely,
Nikki L. Tinsley