Library of Congress Faces
Mismanagement Investigation
The U.S. General Accounting Office is reportedly planning to investigate alleged irregularities in management and practices at the Library of Congress. Rep. Alpert Wynn (D-Md.) requested the investigation in a March 29 letter to Comptroller General David Walker in which Wynn alleged that LC employees awarding contracts had conflicts of interest that may have violated federal law, the Washington, D.C., newspaper The Hill reported April 24.
Wynn’s staff met with GAO investigators in mid-April. Mike Rious, a senior aide to Wynn, told The Hill that auditors had confirmed that the GAO would investigate.
“We have made several calls to Representative Wynn’s office to ask him what his concerns are,” LC spokesperson Jill Brett told American Libraries, but the library has yet to receive a copy of the letter. “We can’t comment on something we haven’t seen,” said Brett.
The Hill reported April 12 that black employees are planning to take legal action against LC for not living up to terms of a settlement reached in a 1982 discrimination lawsuit. The case, Cook v. Billington, was settled in 1994. Although the U.S. District Court set a deadline of March 1, 2001, for LC to have a computerized employee-selection system in place, “that new system has not yet been fully implemented,” said Leon Turner, chair of the Cook Class Steering Committee. “What we’ve going to do is either fold this discrimination into the present litigation or initiate a new lawsuit,” Turner told The Hill.
Posted Aprl 29, 2002.
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