A quick post about the unjust firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Walpin. I just saw a fair piece about the firing in a media source out of San Francisco. The San Francisco Chronicle writer Debra Saunders does a nice presenting the IG Walpin story fairly.
A 'confused, disoriented' whistle-blower?
Debra J. Saunders
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
As recent AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin tells the story, when a White House aide called him on June 10, Walpin thought the administration was calling him to enlist his support - as a prominent Republican member of the New York bar - for the confirmation of Sonya Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead, Special Counsel to the President Norm Eisen informed Walpin that President Obama wanted Walpin out of his job.
Now the question is why Obama let him go.
Walpin's defenders believe Obama fired him because Walpin was a successful whistle-blower, who blew the whistle on the president's friends and pet causes.
In 2008, the Corporation for National and Community Service asked Walpin to check out St. HOPE, a Sacramento nonprofit run by former NBA star Kevin Johnson, who was subsequently elected mayor of Sacramento. Walpin's office found that AmeriCorps members had misused $847,673 in federal grant funds between 2004 and 2007 and that AmeriCorps hires had been misused to "personally benefit Johnson, including driving him to personal appointments, washing his car and running personal errands" and campaigning in a school board election.
Acting U.S. Attorney Lawrence Brown later announced a legal settlement that called for Johnson, St. HOPE itself and a former St. HOPE executive to repay taxpayers more than $400,000 the corporation had received in grants. On June 4, Walpin issued another report, this one questioning $16 million in awards by the Research Foundation of the City University of New York. As Walpin explained in a letter to CUNY, "The program doesn't work because it adds no service to the community which is not already provided by the Fellows program. Therefore, taxpayers are not getting their money's worth."
Clearly Walpin is a stickler. "There are people in our country who badly need the money for these community service benefits," he told me over the phone....Continue Reading
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