Interior Inspector Devaney Rewarded With Stimulus Oversight Post

This entry was posted by owl and bear on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 5:18 pm.

This should not go unnoticed, though it probably will.

President Obama has appointed Earl E. Devaney as chairman of the Transparency and Accountability Board for the 2009 stimulus plan.

Devaney, whose internal investigations led to downfall of political figures like Jack Abramoff and Gale Norton (and lesser-known people like Julie MacDonald)—as well as the discovery of a sex-and-drugs-for-influence scandal at the U.S. Interior Department—is a kind of folk hero to environmentalists who had given up hope during Bush’s second term.

No doubt most people haven’t heard of Earl Devaney, but he’s apparently known to Barack Obama. It’s great to see that he’s being rewarded for his integrity—even as he served an administration that tried to impose its own amorality from the top-down.

President Obama told a group of Governors this morning, “I am also proud to announce the appointment of Earl Devaney as Chair of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board. For nearly a decade as Inspector General at the Interior Department, Earl has doggedly pursued waste, fraud and mismanagement, and [Vice President Biden] and I can’t think of a more tenacious and efficient guardian of the hard-earned tax dollars the American people have entrusted us to wisely invest.”

[Halperin]