A senior IRS executive testified Tuesday that IRS whistle-blowers are ostracized and their "careers destroyed" while charges against senior level managers often go unpunished.
The appearance of Yvonne D. DesJardins, chief of the IRS employee and labor relations section, was unexpected and came on the opening of four days of Senate panel hearings into abuse and mismanagement at the tax collection agency.Moving to combat the problems on another front, the Clinton administration announced the appointment of former FBI and CIA director William Webster to review the practices of the tax agency's criminal investigative division.
DesJardins describes herself as a whistle-blower who also handled many reports of misconduct made against senior IRS officials between May 1994 and October 1996.
"In some instances, actions were taken; however in many instances, they were not," DesJardins said. "In those instances where no action was taken, it appeared that those individuals were being protected by the organization by either being reassigned with payment of relocation expenses" or until they retired.
IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti intends to meet with DesJardins to discuss her allegations, an IRS executive said.
"The whistle-blowers are ostracized and careers destroyed and those senior officials who engaged in the misconduct which was reported and substantiated, are not only protected from receiving any disciplinary actions but are oftentimes rewarded during the same year the misconduct occurred," she told the Senate Finance Committee.
Webster, who headed the FBI during the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations and the CIA during the Reagan and George Bush administrations, promised to complete his review by year's end.
He said he had no judgment yet about the validity of complaints alleging heavy-handed enforcement practices at the division but said, "This is not going to be a search-and-destroy type investigation."
Senate Finance Committee Chairman William Roth, R-Del., said his hearings were focusing on "a number of serious issues which weigh heavily on the integrity of the IRS." Roth, who held hearings on the IRS last year, said Tuesday that the agency is full of talented hardworking employees, but "they suffer under this current system, and they need to know how serious we are."
A witness at Tuesday's hearing, Ray Cody Mayo Jr., maintained that he was targeted by the IRS for standing up for taxpayers. Mayo, a lawyer from Shreveport, La., said he filed a federal lawsuit against the IRS after "a campaign of harassment (that) continued for a period of years.
"The agency cannot be trusted to police itself," Mayo said in a statement. "I only filed suit after making a complaint to the IRS internal security division and nothing was done."
The four days of hearings came as legislation to revamp the tax collector and expand taxpayers' rights was expected to reach the Senate floor next week.
IRS oversight hearings held in September by Roth's committee pushed an IRS overhaul to the political center stage. But this new round of hearings were being held in a much more politically charged environment.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said that while it is necessary to improve the IRS, Tuesday's hearings lacked balance and "failed to rise above partisan politics."
"Passing a solid restructuring bill will do more to get the IRS on track than a hundred of these hearings where we sit, pontificate and play politics," Baucus said. Roth, however, insisted that "there is no partisanship in pursuit of the facts." He said the hearings would delve into a range of issues:
- Different treatment between high-level IRS executives and rank-and-file workers in disciplinary cases, even when they committed the same offense.
- How investigative techniques to deal with violent and dangerous criminals are used against taxpayers who aren't violent or dangerous.
- Taxpayers who faced armed raids of their homes or businesses, which Roth said "were conducted on the flimsiest of evidence."
- Racism and discrimination at the agency.
- Weaknesses in internal oversight.
Seeking to ease the sting of the hearings, Rossotti announced a package of initiatives to improve the IRS criminal investigations division.
"The criminal investigation division of the IRS plays a pivotal role in fighting tax evasion, and it is critical that its operations be beyond reproach," Rossotti said in a statement. "We must address these concerns in a thorough, fair and objective fashion."
In addition, Rossotti requested a new task force to review the complaint and disciplinary process across the entire IRS.