Oversight committee should reject legislation abolishing CIGIE

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform should reject the “Restoring Integrity and Efficiency to Inspector General Oversight Act,” according to a letter sent by CREW, Government Accountability Project, Project On Government Oversight, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Public Citizen and Protect Democracy. The bill—which would abolish the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), transfer certain CIGIE functions to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and eliminate the Integrity Committee—would significantly impair independent oversight.

Inspectors general are crucial to uncovering and combatting waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government, and CIGIE’s mission includes ensuring Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs) have highly skilled workforces to carry out those essential functions. To support that mission, CIGIE publishes OIG reports on a central website, tracks IG vacancies, runs a training institute and maintains an Integrity Committee to facilitate investigations of allegations of wrongdoing against IGs. CIGIE is an “independent entity” in the executive branch. By contrast, OMB—the agency to which the bill would transfer some of CIGIE’s responsibilities—sits in the Executive Office of the President and lacks the institutional expertise in standards for independent audits and investigations that is crucial to CIGIE’s functions.

Rather than transferring these functions to OMB, the committee should focus on ensuring that OMB does not constrain CIGIE’s ability to perform these and other duties. Despite OMB having spent most of the last year attempting to prevent CIGIE from being able to effectively support the IG community, the bill proposes to transfer these responsibilities to the OMB Director. The committee should reject this effort to further politicize IGs, which would hinder the effectiveness and efficiency of the IG community and violate the principles of independence that serve as its foundation.

Transferring this authority to the OMB Director is particularly concerning given that both the president and OMB have demonstrated hostility toward these independent offices. Since the beginning of his second term, President Trump has systematically disrupted, weakened or outright eliminated the guardrails meant to protect against waste, fraud and abuse within the executive branch, including by firing 17 inspectors general within days of returning to office. OMB has likewise attempted to undercut the independence of the IG community, including by limiting OIG budget requests and, critically, unlawfully restricting CIGIE’s funding. 

The Integrity Committee within CIGIE is the watchdog of the watchdogs. Several of the individuals who have been confirmed as IGs previously served in the president’s administration—including at the agencies they now audit. Others have demonstrated a lack of independence from the agencies they were established to investigate. The risk of politicization in these offices makes it all the more important for whistleblowers and other interested individuals and organizations to have the ability to raise allegations of wrongdoing against IGs themselves with the Integrity Committee—which would not be possible if CIGIE was abolished.

The coalition urges the committee to reject this legislation and instead focus its efforts on both improving CIGIE’s ability to hold inspectors general accountable and conducting much-needed oversight of OMB’s ongoing efforts to constrain CIGIE’s ability to ensure a well-trained and highly skilled IG workforce.