WASHINGTON — The former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, who resigned in July after criticizing President Donald Trump for ethics lapses and failing to distance himself from his investments, told members of Congress on Wednesday that he will provide specific recommendations next week to increase transparency throughout the federal government.
Walter Shaub, now senior ethics director at the Campaign Law Center, which advocates for fair and accessible elections, listed several areas that could be improved: senior officials’ travel reports, posting Office of Government Ethics information online and ethics waivers for executive branch officials.
“The purpose of a government ethics program is to be process oriented and to make sure there that there’s integrity to those processes,” Shaub told the Congressional Transparency Committee.“… When it’s jeopardized, then all of the system is jeopardized and it gets in the way of getting the job done, whatever the goal is, on either side of the aisle,” Shaub said.
Citing former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s resignation over his use of chartered flights, Shaub indicated that the problem could have been mitigated had the General Services Agency quickly posted his travel reports online.
He said Congress should require the GSA to post the information online and officials should be required to provide more often than the current requirement of twice a year.
Shaub quipped that Price and his team might have considered other options if they knew the cost would be immediately disclosed.
“They could’ve saved the taxpayers money if they took an Uber to Philadelphia,” he said.
More frequent postings also would cut down on Freedom of Information Act requests, he said.
Shaub noted that the lack of transparency is not exclusive to the Trump administration. Officials of the State Department and the Department of Justice during the Obama administration failed to comply with ethics training in a timely fashion, he said.
Shaub resigned in July, six months before the end of his tenure. It is believed that he resigned early because his criticisms of Trump for skirting ethics guidelines earned him stinging criticisms from the administration.
He will testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform next week, where he is expected to outline the specific recommendations he would make to increase transparency in government and improve ethics compliance processes.