Michael Caldwell, the Northeast Region director of the National Park Service, has been reassigned while Park Service Director Jon Jarvis reviews allegations that he committed fraud in filing travel vouchers/NPS
A regional director for the National Park Service, desiring "nicer" experiences on his travels, ran up nearly $11,500 in personal travel that he billed the Park Service for, and also collected nearly $6,000 in pay and per diem on some of these travels while not working, according to the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General.
Between 2011 and 2015, Michael A. Caldwell, the agency's Northeast Regional director, rented bigger vehicles than he should have to bring friends on some of his travels, covered lodging costs of personal guests, was reimbursed for mileage "that he never drove," rented an SUV for "an official trip two days before his official business was scheduled to start," and also "spent a day driving the SUV 450 miles out of the way for unofficial purposes," the OIG's report said.
"Caldwell admitted during his interviews that he had taken these trips and that he had knowingly violated federal travel regulations. He said that in doing so he had taken advantage of his official positions, first as a GS-15 deputy regional director and then as a member of the Senior Executive Service. He said he deserved, at minimum, a suspension," the OIG's report released Thursday said, adding that the case had been submitted to Park Service Director Jon Jarvis for disposition.
The case report didn't indicate whether Mr. Caldwell made restitution. But in the seven-page report (attached below) he was very forthcoming in admitting to the allegations made against him, stating that his travel vouchers had been "tainted and fraudulent.”
More so, he told the investigators that "he had arranged his official travel to suit his personal travel plans. He admitted that he was not trying to save the government money on his trips and was instead trying to have 'nicer' experiences. He said that if everyone in the government worked the way he did, 'we wouldn’t get anything done.'"
Park Service officials in Washington said Thursday evening that the matter was under review.
"The leadership of the National Park Service appreciates the Office of Inspector General for investigating this case and recognizes the importance of independent investigations in situations like this. The National Park Service is committed to creating a more accountable and responsible culture at all levels of the organization, particularly among its leaders," Tom Crosson, the agency's chief spokesman, wrote in an email.
"The OIG’s findings related to Mr. Caldwell’s actions are very serious and the National Park Service is in the process of considering disciplinary action against Mr. Caldwell that is consistent with due process," he added. "In the interim, the National Park Service determined that it would be in the best interest of the organization to temporarily reassign him to duties outside of the regional office, while disciplinary action is considered.
"It is unfortunate that these actions have called into question the judgment of a leader with an otherwise strong record of public service," Mr. Crosson said.
During his reassignment, Mr. Caldwell will work under the Park Service's deputy director, Mike Reynolds, said Mr. Crosson, although he didn't know specifically what the regional director would be doing. Pending his reassigment, the regional office will be run by its deputy directors, he said.
The Northeast Region encompasses more than 80 units of the National Park System, including Acadia National Park, Valley Forge National Historical Park, Shenandoah National Park, and Valley Forge National Historical Park, as well as 21 National Heritage Areas,
The investigation was launched in March after allegations were made that Mr. Caldwell had traveled to Cape Cod National Seashore "under the guise of official business when in fact he went there on vacation." The investigators also determined, and the regional director acknowledged, that he accepted free housing in a rental cottage owned by a Park Service employee, a violation of federal regulations that both prohibit supervisors from accepting gifts from subordinates and subordinates from giving their supervisors gifts.
Along with confirming the allegations against Mr. Caldwell, the OIG investigators concluded that the Park Service poorly monitors its employees' travel expenses. Peggy O'Dell, who was deputy director for operations before retiring from the agency this past summer, was supposed to approve travel vouchers of regional directors, the report said. However, she had an assistant handle that task on her behalf, the report said.
"O’Dell said she had taken it on faith that the travelers who submitted their authorizations and vouchers to her were being honest, and she acknowledged that the NPS process for reviewing these documents could be improved," the investigators wrote. "She said that one way to improve the process would be for the regional directors to post their leave information in a clearly visible location. She also said that NPS needed to address the practicality of making high-level managers such as herself responsible for reviewing every travel voucher for multiple direct reports."
The bottom line, Ms. O'Dell told the investigators, was that "that the entire process depended on travelers telling the truth when submitting their travel documents."
Comments
The report only talked about the total cost of the trips... It said nothing about the fradulent charges. This article improperly referred to the $11,500 as covering the "nicer" accomodations, even though that was the total cost and not the fraudulent cost. His actions should not be tolerated, but it should also be reported properly.
I wonder how much the extra charges were?
Rick B is wrong. This incident appears to be right in line with Director Jarvis' culture of corruption, and the so-called feeding frenzy against him was fully justified. The many superintendent scandals during his tenure made it clear that his cronies could get away with almost anything. Caldwell should be fired, but is now working for Reynolds, who one poster insists is trying to right the ship. I hope he is right, but have my doubts.
Mr. Caldwell should be fired immediately. Any federal employee who travels knows the rules and he certainly did at his level. He is an arrogant person and he knew exactly what he was doing. In my opinion he is a thief and who knows how long this has been going on for prior to 2011. if this is swept under the carpet and the penalty is anything less than firing than I guess this should be lesson to all the good honest workers that crime does pay!
I disagree with most who are posting on this page. Caldwell took his family on travel with him and fraudulently charged the government. There is no excusing his actions which deserve the appropriate punishment. He has admitted wrongdoing and has already repaid the government for all costs associated with his indiscretionS. He was freaking stupid but termination is not warranted. This guy is not the typical above the law good ol' boy. The NPS is better with him than without. Suspension and reassignment are more fitting for the crime.
Anonymous 1:24am Dec 24--
As a recovering academic and only 8 year employee of NPS, your first sentence mirrors my experience. I see 2 pretty distinct cultures within NPS. I read about and occasionally interact with an older culture risen from the (LE) ranger ranks, tolerant of bullying & harassment & sexism & informal perks of the job. I'm willing to posit that those folks may have done many positive things for the park service in the past, but that was before my time. There's another culture of folks in NPS, often coming out of universities with MS or PhDs that simply wouldn't tolerate the harassment documented at GRCA and elsewhere (I know of 2 other big cases that haven't made the news). Aside from what they learned for their science or history degrees, they also learned a culture of women as colleagues & equals, and learned accountability. The cultures don't split out perfectly by age & education: I know exceptions in both directions, and one of the cases that hasn't come out involved PhD folks with no excuse. I'm fortunate that the parks & programs I routinely deal with are mostly in this second culture (which also makes the occasional exception especially jarring). My impression is that individual parks tend to be one culture or another (or something else), but not mixtures of the cultures. That suggests an effect of actual leadership at the level of parks or programs setting standards & norms for their parks. I don't deal with regional offices or WASO outside of the directorate I'm a peon in, so I don't have observations there.
As for Caldwell, I think he should get the same punishment anyone else should, whether dismissal or leave without pay. That's not $100 here or there when it would have taken almost $100 in his and an admin's time to set up the travel right in the system, or an extra $200 on a flight that saves him 4 hours of his time. What I read was flat out abuse and entitlement.
Contra Al Runte, I'm not optimistic that the new administration will be a positive change. There's the obvious optics issue for cleaning up the parts of NPS with issues of sexual harassment & assault, let alone bullying; that cleanup may drop in priority. But from my perspective the blunt force freeze on civilian federal employees, with the idea of reducing the size of the government workforce by not replacing employees who retire or leave, could very well be a disaster. NPS FTE equivalent employees are already down substantially from the peak in 2003, even though visitation is up (the units added in the last decade have very few employees and thus have little effect on the squeeze). When a park's chief of facilities retires, pretty clearly that position needs to be filled: someone has to deal with FMSS and cyclical maintenence. If this freeze works like previous hiring freezes, the position will be open only to current employees: effectively a transfer or promotion, keeping the spirit of reducing the employee count by not hiring replacements. Such "inverse musical chairs", where the chairs remain but the number of players decreases, leads to parks scavenging from each other, and the parks with the most problems and least glamor or living conditions stuck with vacant positions. And, I don't have a lot of faith that a brute-force freeze won't cause a trainwreck with seasonals & term employees, as they aren't "status candidates" but parks can't run without them. While I think it's unlikely that parks won't have seasonals next summer, I do see lots of term positions lapsing, greatly affecting regions like PWR that use more terms than career hires. To be clear: I think that repeated 3-4 year term positions are abusive, I think that seasonals and "subject to furlough" 13-15pp positions are abusive, and I don't like core operations being performed by volunteers. But a freeze on positions prevents converting terms to career positions, and squeezes park operations toward more use of volunteers for operations work instead of enhanced visitor programs. Add in the almost complete dysfunction of the current HR hiring process in WASO and most regions, and I see a very bumpy next few years.
tomp2 ---
That sounds like an informed voice of experience, and mirrors much of what I've heard from career, seasonal, and temp NPSers of my acquaintance.
The problem is this: all too often when "waste, fraud, or abuse" cases are reported to the IG's office, they often don't investigate and they don't pursue discipline---especially in Whistleblower cases. And if the Office of Special Counsel investigates a case and finds someone guilty--even if they are found to be guilty "beyond any reasonable doubt"---the OSC has limited options:
1. It can recommend "disciplinary" action by the guilty person's agency...but that usually can't involve more than three weeks of suspension without pay. In addition, the appropriate agency could "discipline" the person by reassignment but that is a decision of the agency---not the OSC. And all too often--- in the NPS--- when people are transferred, they are transferred to fairly nice desk jobs or to better parks, and not to less desirable locations or less interesting jobs.
2. On the other hand, if the OSC wants to pursue more discipline than just three weeks of suspention without pay, it can present a case to the MSPB--the Merit System Protection Board--but that takes a lot more time and energy, and the OSB currently doesn't have the budget or staff to pursue many cases. Consequently, they default to "settlement agreements" in which the guilty person's agency admits no fault, the guilty person admits no fault, and "discipline" is left to the discretion of the guilty person's agency...which again can can impose a three week suspensoin without pay ....but nothing more unless a full blown case is presented to the MSPB.
At www.schundler.net you can see how these options played out. In my FOIA case, the IG's office did investigate, they recommended prosecution of the Superintendent who had suddenly retired, but the federal prosecuting attorney chose not to prosecute. In that case, the guilty Superintendent had been wasting tens of thousands of dollars---and possibly up to $200,000 in one year---and suffered no penalties. Two years later in our Whistleblower case against the next Superintendent at Mesa Verde NP, the IG's office did everything to frustrate the case. Eventually the OSC investigated and pursued a settlement with the NPS---but in the end, the guilty Superintendent probably received no more than a hidden slap on the wrist or a few weeks of suspension without pay.
The NPS doesn't enter into settlement agreements unless they and their employee really are "guilty beyond any reasonable doubt." Nevertheless, in far too many cases, people guilty of violating federal laws and regulations, and people who have retaliated inappropriately against others or abused others simply are not held responsible, and usually suffer no real punishment or significant discipline.
This all could change if a new standard was implemented. It would be a standard which would have to be communicated effectively and enforced through examples. And it would have to publicize that
(1) violations of laws and regulations simply would not be tolerated at any level, and
(2) Superintendents, Regional Directors, the Director, and the IG's office will stop protecting and defending guilty employees and will start helping in their prosecution.
long record of not being caught you mean!