Tuesday, April 1, 2014
LANL senior management woes
We found that LANL inappropriately awarded a sole source consultant agreement to an individual who was the spouse of a senior LANL manager. We also discovered that the consultant did not disclose his spousal relationship with the senior LANL manager at the time of award. In addition, the senior manager did not notify LANL ethics officials or her superior of a potential conflict of interest involving her spouse's consulting agreement until 5 months after the consultant agreement was awarded.
http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f14/IG-0903_0.pdf
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10 comments:
Old news. These are the events that led to the resignation of Beth Sellers, LANL Deputy Director.
True that Sellers resigned over the press leak of the investigation report. It is still odd that she did not resign over the events listed in the report, only over the fact that they became public. And it is downright unexplainable why McMillan kept her as his deputy after he knew about the events in 2012.
To boot, press reports like the one below make it likely that POGO and Congress will now get involved in the issue.
http://freebeacon.com/issues/doe-officials-husband-bills-taxpayers-for-opera-visit/
What Sellers did is not wrong in the modern corporate world. We put in a for profit company we expect to get the culture that comes with it. We should be proud of Sellers.
So you believe in the morality of situational ethics? No, you don't. Your continued tongue-in-cheek support of the new "corporate" labs is getting old. "For profit" as a description of LLNS/LANS is misleading. The award fee is larger than that awarded to UC in the old days, so in that sense, the award is probably larger than the cost of management, i.e., "profit," but the LLCs have no competition in the corporate world, and there is no way to increase "profit" above the maximum allowable award fee. They are not really "corporations" but single purpose, limited lifetime companies that will cease to exist the day they lose the DOE/NNSA contracts to run the labs, which they don't own.
"April 2, 2014 at 9:13 PM"
I agree with you however time and time again management will use the excuse that we are a corporation now so that they must be compensated like CEO's and have all the business perks, secrecy, rules, and so on of real corporations.
I agree with you however time and time again management will use the excuse that we are a corporation now...
April 3, 2014 at 6:57 AM
I bet the second or third time that claim is met with loud, derisive laughter they'll quit saying it. Give it a try, if you have the guts. Employees have to realize that they have the absolute power to cause the LLCs to get low enough rankings from DOE/NNSA that they lose the contracts.
That this sort of illicit dishonest conduct should occur in the highest management ranks of a nuclear weapons laboratory shoul scare the hell out of you and any other American reading this! Cheating on exams by launch officers pales in comparison. For crisakes, the Director tried to cover this up. He's the dude who signs off on our weapons functionality. Can he be trusted to be more honest in this responsibility than in the Sellers affair? Give it some thought, fellow citizens.
There hasn't been an honest LANL Director since Browne.
April 3, 2014 at 3:40 PM
Good point, but we are told over and over again, we are a corporation now and it is the only way to protect ourselves from being in in another scandal. If there is a problem the corporation can deal with the media and congress and no problem. Under UC there may have been more transparency but scandal after scandal hit the labs and rational responses will not work on the modern American, however if we are private than the we are clean. How long can the American Empire last.
How long can the American Empire last.
April 3, 2014 at 9:47 PM
Only as long as we elect Presidents who behave like Emperors.
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