When P. Daniel Smith walked away from his job as deputy director of the National Park Service last fall, he didn't walk back into retirement but rather into a position Interior Secretary David Bernhardt created for Smith that just happened to be based in Smith's hometown, according to job posting records.

But it was more than two weeks after Bernhardt put Smith in the position to "lead NPS efforts on the 250th commemoration of our nation’s independence" that the job opening was actually posted. And then the posting was open for just seven days.

"The only time I have seen that happen is when they had somebody specifically in mind," said Phil Francis, chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks. Other Park Service veterans say a job usually is posted for at least two weeks.

Francis added that typically the federal government needs to field an adequate number of candidates for a job opening, and that the "position should be open long enough and in a wide enough area of consideration to ensure that people from all walks of life can apply."

The circumstances around Smith's new job, announced last September 30, have prompted Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility to request an investigation by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General into just what exactly Smith does, and how often he works for his estimated salary of $165,000.

Park Service officials in Washington, D.C., going into the long holiday weekend, could not immediate respond Friday to the circumstances around the job, "Commemoration Specialist," or why it was based in Cary, North Carolina, where records show Smith has had a home since 1999, according to PEER.

The job posting surfaced October 18, 2019, and expired October 24. 

"This position serves as the Senior Advisor and Program Manager for National Park Service Anniversary and Commemorative activities within the National Park Service Headquarters in Washington D.C. As Special Assistant, the incumbent is responsible for developing and directing the implementation of policies, guidelines, training and programs for overall coordination, planning and successful implementation of a variety of national commemorations and anniversaries for the NPS," the posting stated. 

Among the job responsibilities are to meet with "representatives from the Department of the Interior and other agencies, the Office of Management and Budget, White House Council on Environmental Quality and members of Congress."

Why a job that required the incumbent to attend "frequent briefings and meetings" with such other government representatives in Washington would be based in Cary, where there is no Park Service office, raised eyebrows at PEER.

"Sources report he is working remotely from his home in North Carolina and also has an office at the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, near his home. Employees report that he is on a telework arrangement and he rarely comes to his office to work," Peter Jenkins, PEER's senior counsel, wrote in the request for IOG to look into the matter.

While Smith has been described by colleagues as affable, his career with the National Park Service has seen him investigated by the OIG a couple times, once with a negative outcome, and has seen him move between being a political appointee and a civil servant.

As a political appointee working for then-Park Service Director Fran Mainella in 2004, Smith became involved in a dispute at Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park in which he was implicated for improperly paving the way for the owner of the Washington Redskins to cut down trees on a 2-acre scenic easement held by the park. An investigation by the Inspector General's office at the time found that Smith "inappropriately used his position to apply pressure and circumvent NPS procedures" to permit Redskins owner Dan Snyder to have trees up to 6 inches wide at breast height on the easement cut down to improve the Potomac River view from his mansion. According to the investigation by then-Inspector General Earl Devaney's staff, the Park Service failed to conduct the requisite environmental assessment as required by the NPS Director's Handbook before issuing the special user permit to Snyder.

Soon after that matter, Smith was transferred to Colonial National Historical Park in Virginia as superintendent, a position that offered Civil Service protection that enabled him to remain with the Park Service once George W. Bush left office in 2009. 

While Smith retired in 2014 after a long government career that dates to 1970 when he returned from service in Vietnam and took a job in the office of U.S. Sen. Sam J. Ervin, Jr. D-NC., he came back in January 2018 when then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke tabbed him as a political appointee to serve as deputy director of the National Park Service exercising the authority of the director. In March 2018 he was accused of inappropriately grabbing his crotch in a hallway of the Interior Department, and while he later acknowledged it was inappropriate, he was cleared of sexual harassment claims.

According to the job posting, the position as Commemoration Specialist is to run for four years. In that role Smith, 73, has returned to Civil Service, and so won't have to leave the job regardless of the outcome of the fall presidential election.

Park Service officials have declined to make Smith available for an interview.