DOCUMENTATION  12/12//2011

The Documentation Section supports the allegations that I made in the previous NAWBC, Home section. Specifically, those allegations include collusion and corruption, blatant cover-ups at all levels, and on-going violations of the False Claims Act by the government’s financial management contractors (AICPA firms, financial software companies, and management consulting firms). The following bullets include: an EPA supervisory accountant job announcement (with no 4 year accounting degree requirement), documentation that shows how political appointees (Republican and Democrat) and financial management contractors routinely hid serious accounting and financial system deficiencies to protect themselves, that administration’s politicians, and their contractor firms (no matter the cost to the American people), meetings with Congressional staffs, letters to Congressmen and the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) documenting blatantly illegal activities, and much more. Finally, the very last bullet shows how both the current and former Comptroller Generals of the U.S. have given patently false written Congressional testimony regarding their continuing statements that, “ the federal government has made significant progress in improving financial management activities and processes.” Review the following documentation and ask yourself the same questions that I have raised, since, over those same years, EPA continues to use manually manipulated spreadsheets to prepare its financial statements. If all federal departments, bureaus, and agencies use the same non GAAP-based financial software, shouldn’t EPA’s deficiencies represent a government-wide and not just an EPA agency problem?  

I am requesting that you also read my brief, Larry Fisher, autobiography to better understand how politicians and top and midlevel financial management bureaucrats have known about these serious deficiencies for 30 years. The only action they took was not only to cover them up but, then, to eliminate the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) 4 year accounting degree requirement for both federal accountants and Office of Inspector General (OIG) auditors to hide them, permanently! When politicians intentionally weaken the government’s infrastructures solely to promote “their” (unilateral) deregulation, outsourcing, and war-related agendas, those actions are more accurately classified as “crimes against the American people.”  The American people already know, first hand, the pain and suffering that thirty years of these Republican political agendas have wreaked upon this country. What most people do not yet understand is that, in the process, these government officials crossed the line and violated the constitution, Congress’ laws, and Agency rules and regulations when they knowingly filled these (once) professional positions with unqualified people.  

The time has come to hold these individuals accountable to the full extent of the law, no matter their former position(s) within the federal government! Read the following documentation and you can be the judge.  Please forward your comments, pro or con, to my email address, lfisher1046@gmail.com.

· Office of Personnel Management (OPM) accountant position standard, A February 2009 EPA job announcement for a Supervisory Accountant GS-13 position illustrates how the minimal 4 year accounting degree Office of Personnel Management (OPM) requirement has been eliminated (see pages 2 and 3). Now, refer back to the above autobiography and realize that, in October 1987 and the start of the government’s outsourcing effort, Treasury, OMB, and GAO political appointees utilized 7 professional accountants to rubberstamp this politically concocted effort; 5 of those individuals had 4 year accounting degrees and 2 had both their accounting degree and CPA certificate). Consider that pre October 1987, all professional accountants, within the GS-510 series, were required to have their 4 year accounting degrees. Post 1987, the same GS-510 professional accountant series no longer required a 4 year accounting degree. Why?

· October 31, 1986 Personnel Action - During the period 1980 – 1986, I was an Accounting Branch Chief at the Veterans Administration (VA) when I resigned on October 31, 1986 because of the VA upper management’s: (1) falsification of their financial statements to hide a $40 million dollar anti-deficiency, and (2) failure to question the incoherent and illogical Treasury and OMB written accounting policies that all federal agencies were required to follow along with their refusal and inability to even explain those policies. In order to hide all levels of gross incompetence on the part of the GAO, Treasury, OMB, and VA financial managers, my personnel records were illegally altered to include my resignation as “conflicting views with upper management with regard to system improvement ideas,” as noted in the above October 31, 1986 Personnel Action.  

· March 22, 1993, I wrote a letter to the Office of Special Counsel requesting assistance after I had been removed by my supervisor (an engineer) from my Branch Chief, Systems and Accounting position and relocated to a basement mailroom. He retaliated against me because I reported him to EPA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) office for entering into an illegal agreement with one of EPA's vendors. There were much more serious allegations against him that could (and should) have resulted in his firing and jail time. However, in keeping with the government's self-serving politicians and their political appointees (unwritten) policy of protecting their own, he enjoyed 17 more years of a GS-15 salary ($150,000 annual salary up until his retirement on January 1, 2011), annual bonuses, and a full retirement, complements of the taxpayer. 

· June 8, 1998 , I gave a formal presentation to Senator Fred Thompson’s staff, then Chairman of the Government Affairs Committee, questioning the logic of the federal government’s (and AICPA / FASAB) accounting standard. I suggested that congress require proof of this failed standard before wasting more taxpayer money on related financial software that would never work. My concerns were ignored. See Fred Thompson letter.

· June 1, 1999, the Washington Times published my OP-ED article, “At EPA, Waste, Fraud, and Abuse,” questioning: (1) the logic of the federal government-wide accounting (and AICPA / FASAB) standard, (2) EPA’s efforts to hide all accounting problems to obtain their meaningless clean audit opinions, and (3) Congress’s lack of interest in holding anyone accountable. See Washington Times article. The only bright side to this published OPED was that I received a one sentence supportive email from Rosa Parks and a phone call from Bette Dudka, Ernest Fizgerald’s secretary.  While I never received a response to my brief return email to Ms. Parks, I was able to maintain intermittent communication with Mr. Fitzgerald up until his retirement in his 80’s. The threats and ongoing retaliation continued.

· October 1999, This FASAB News article revealed the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board’s (FASAB) troubling relationship with the AICPA. Now, consider that the Central Agencies (OMB, GAO, and Treasury) Executive Schedule (EX) and senior executive service (SES) political appointees are ultimately responsible for overseeing the accounting and financial system standards that all federal departments, bureaus, and agencies are required to follow. These overpaid political appointees then outsourced all of their responsibilities to AICPA firms, financial software companies, and management consulting firms. Now, these same political appointees and financial management contractors are covering up the fact that, today, all federal agencies still use manual Excel spreadsheets to prepare their financial statements (as the above and below documents illustrate). This is despite the fact that taxpayers have paid untold billions of their money since October 1987 with the outsourcing of the first deficient financial software to all federal agencies.

· November 9, 2001, I obtained a copyright for my government accounting prototype (GAP) because it became increasingly clear that it was much more profitable for the AICPA to oversee two broken and dysfunctional non GAAP-based public sector (FASAB and GASB) standards than to have one GAAP-based public sector standard that worked. Recall that the term GAAP is an acronym for generally accepted accounting principles.

GAP integrates the public sector’s budgeting and accounting standards and processes in a single model that is based upon generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). This single, GAAP-based public sector GAP model (for federal, state, local, and even foreign governments) is easily explained because it modifies the American Institute of Certified Public Accountant’s (AICPA) existing private sector accounting standard to fit the public sector’s unique budgeting and accounting needs. A scaled down version of GAP appears in the Taxpayer for Government Accounting Reform (TGAR) website, http://www.tgar.org.

· September 23, 2002, Ollie Darby, Larry Fisher, and an EPA contract specialist, William Newby sent a letter to David Walker, Comptroller General of the U.S., offering our assistance in explaining this accounting model and integrating the government’s accounting, budgeting, procurement, and property financial processes in a single, easily explained process. See Comptroller General of the United States letter.

· June 23, 2005, I learned in a GOVEXEC.com article that Congress is now paying contractors to examine “disconnects’ that they found in the government’s accounting and budgeting process. This is the same information that I (and others) had made available to the Central Agencies (OMB, GAO, and Treasury) Congress, and David Walker ever since October 1986.  See GOVEXEC.com article.

· April 7, 2006 Email -- OCFO Gallup Survey where I raised legitimate concerns over the government’s: (1) systematic replacement of its 4-year college accountant degreed and Certified Public Accountant (CPA) professionals with minimally qualified people, (2) the problem of still alluding to these “managers” as accountants, and (3) the very real internal and self-imposed threat to our country’s financial security. This email invoked a visit from the Director, RTP Finance Center with a “cease and desist order” not to send any such future emails.

· April 11, 2006 Email – Feedback on Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) Contract where I characterized the BAH contract as a gross waste of our tax dollars. Details were also provided on how the government had intentionally used deficient software over the past 20 years. This email invoked another visit from the Director, RTP Finance Center with another “cease and desist order.”

· April 25, 2006 Email – EPA’s future financial software purchase included my comments identifying EPA’s currently proposed $84 million dollar software purchase as a repeat of the same failure (and gross waste) that has occurred over the past 20 years when a joint OMB, Treasury, GAO task force made available "untested" non GAAP-based public sector financial software to an entire Federal bureaucracy, from October 1987 thru the present. This email precipitated another visit by the Director, RTP Finance Center, and more threats, etc.

· October 23, 2006 Email – Government Accounting Sweat Shops where I made a contrast with the very high educational requirements of private sector accountants and information technology (IT) professionals compared to the very minimal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) position standards for those same positions in the federal government. This October 23, 2006 email involved another visit by the Director, RTP Finance Center. This time he stated that unless I promised not to send any future emails of this nature that there would be serious consequence for my actions. I refused. On October 25, 2006, I was called into my GS-14 supervisor’s office (compete with her high school GED), along with an EPA HHR representative and informed that I was facing a 4 day LWOP suspension. This suspension involved allegations that had been concocted by the EPA Director, RTP Finance Center.  On November 29, 2006, the Director, RTP Finance Center signed a Notice of Decision to Suspend even though he was prevented from taking part in this suspension, according to EPA’s own rules and regulations. Subsequently, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) required him to sign a statement on July 5, 2007, under penalty of perjury, stating that all statements that he had provided were true and accurate. He not only lied under oath but was supported by upper management all the way up the EPA Chief Financial Officer (CFO) chain of command. It may help to understand that EPA’s managers may have had a vested interest in eliminating me because pre-1987 all accountant managers either had their 4 year accounting degrees or were CPA’s, post 1987, the majority of these managers were non accountants.

· December 15, 2008, I sent a certified letter to the current and former Comptroller Generals of the U.S., Gene Dodaro and David Walker, along with supporting documentation. In that brief letter, I questioned the accuracy of their combined eleven years of written congressional testimony and ongoing claims of "significant progress in federal financial management."

· February 6, 2009, I received a letter from GAO's Chief Accountant, for Gene Dodaro, noting that GAO had already acknowledged its inability to prepare the U.S. government's consolidated financial statements (CFS's) due to material weaknesses. He further stated that congress' accountability legislation and the government's cadre of professionals ensured a sound U.S. government financial management infrastructure. 

· March 9, 2009, I sent my response to GAO's Chief Accountant and questioned the value of congress' accountability legislation with no real whisleblower protection, his cadre of professionals that included former GS-4 and GS-6 accounting clerks (now GS-13, 14, and 15 managers), the government's lack of a GAAP-based public sector standard and inability to generate accurate financial statements (at any level), and my concern over GAO's troubling relationship with AICPA firms and other financial management contractors. I received no further follow-up letters questioning the accuracy of my statements.

· March 9, 2009, I sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid with copies to a number of other congressmen that was titled "Contractor fraud at GAO, OMB, Treasury, and GSA." In keeping with Congress' do nothing ethic, my only reply was from Senator Burr's office in a three paragraph statement that addressed none of the issues that I had raised.

· October 5, 2009, I sent an internal email to the EPA Director, RTP Finance Center that was titled, “Your Quarterly Certification of EPA’s Property Financial Statement,” with copies to the EPA Administrator, EPA assistant Chief Financial Officer (CFO), and Office of Inspector General (OIG) auditors. In that email I reminded all parties that I had consistently, over the past eleven years, stated my strong objections concerning the Director’s routine certification of these deficient, manually manipulated spreadsheet totals that comprised EPA’s  property financial statement totals. I received no formal response, only more threats and retaliation.

· May 27, 2010, I provided a detailed write-up of “EPA’s Property Reconciliation Process.” per the Director, RTP Finance Center’s request, In that email, I also provided copies to the person I was training (Joe Shellabarger) and the KPMG auditor (LaNae Twite) who had consistently hidden all of the deficiencies that I had reported to her, the Director, RTP Finance Center, and also to the OIG auditors. In that email, I described EPA’s manual reconciliation process as challenging basic accounting principles, lacking fundamental controls, and raising legitimate questions concerning the functionality of both the financial software that EPA procured in 1989 from AMS and an equally deficient (2008) upgrade by CGI (the new name for the old AMS). On June 2, 2010, the Director, RTP Finance Center removed me from my 5 hour a month (and only) responsibility of preparing these meaningless manual reports and assigned me to an accounting clerk position that I held up until I retired on January 1, 2011.

· June 9, 2010, I filed a Disclosure of Information form with the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) to warn the Obama administration that his 24 Chief Financial Officer (CFO) “non accountant” appointees were receiving inaccurate financial information regarding all facets of the government's financial management operation. I also forwarded a copy of that OSC documentation to EPA's CFO, Barbara Bennett. My only feedback was more threats and retaliation from EPA's Director, RTP Finance Center. 

· July 6, 2010, In my OSC case, OSC File no. DI-10-2797, Ms. Alexander, the OSC lawyer, found that my allegations of the government’s lowered OPM position standards for accountants and OIG auditors, their systematic replacement with less qualified people, and my assertions of waste, fraud, and abuse of our tax dollars to be without merit.

· July 13, 2010, My response to Ms. Alexander July 6, 2010 letter reminded her that I was removed from my accountant position on June 2, 2010 for revealing protected whistleblower disclosures involving the gross waste, fraud, and abuse of tax payer money. I also provided details of how KPMG consistently hid all the deficiencies that I reported and that this was a serious matter since these AICPA firms oversaw the: (1) implementation of software, (2) consulting of those same services, and then (3) audited their own deficient processes. I received no written response. When I called her several times and requested that she call me, there was no return call.  

· August 4, 2010, I was copied on an Office of Inspector General (OIG)  letter that was sent to the Director, RTP Finance Center that was titled “Improvements Needed in FAS Reconciliation.” In that letter the OIG project manager informed the Director, RTP Finance Center that the (see page 2) “RTP Finance Center property accountant (Larry Fisher) did not exercise due diligence in researching and documenting noted differences. I guess that since I had been formally removed from my accountant position on June 2, 2010 job for complaining how the Director, OIG auditors, and KPMG had consistently covered-up all of my reported deficiencies the OIG did not expect a response from me; they were wrong!

· August 9, 2010, I sent an internal email refuting the EPA OIG project managers allegation, along with copies to the EPA Chief Financial Officer, and other appropriate CFO and OIG staff and manager. In that email, I included the numerous emails that I had sent to both the Director, RTP Finance Center and OIG offices questioning this very flawed and “manual” process, especially after twenty-plus years of implementation and untold billions, that had been spent, government-wide for all federal agencies.

· Sept. 10, 2010, I received a letter from EPA’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) denying my request that the August 23, 2007 deposition between the EPA OGC, myself, and a union representative be made available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The OGC’s denial of my FOIA request was that the deposition contained confidential business information (CBI). The reality is that this single deposition confirmed everything that I had consistently stated over the last thirty years concerning collusion, corruption, and the financial management contractor’s consistent violation of the False Claims Act.

· September 27, 2010, I received another letter from an EPA OGC attorney (this time) in Washington D.C. confirming the EPA OGC Research Triangle Park, NC denial that the August 23, 2007 deposition was CBI and thus could not be made available under FOIA.

· October 21, 2010, I responded to the September 27, 2010 letter and requested that the OSC Washington, D.C. office: (1) conduct a full review of the allegations that led to my 4 day LWOP suspension, (2) file charges against the Director, RTP Finance Center for his false statements under oath, and (3) file charges against the EPA RTP, NC OGC attorney for her failure to question basic conflicts with EPA’s CFO allegations and the information in my August 23, 2007 deposition that would have exonerated me.  

· Decmber 28, 2010, internal email to EPA’s Administrator and Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) that was titled, “Restructuring a Broken, Corrupt, and Corporate Driven Federal Government.” The attached, slightly abbreviated, email details how EPA’s and every federal agencies’ financial statement totals consist of nothing more than manually prepared and fudged Excel spreadsheet totals. This internal email implicates the Central Agencies, 4 of EPA’s offices [Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO), Office of the Inspector General (OIG), Freedom of Information Office (FIO), and Office of General Counsel (OGC)], and the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) in this government-wide financial management cover-up.

· March 9, 2011, Gene Dodaro, Comptroller General of the U.S., continued to provide the same inaccurate and misleading written congressional testimony as his predecessor, David Walker, had done during his tenure (since 1998). Their congressional testimony contends that the U.S. government has made continued and “significant financial management improvement,” as noted in the last 6 years of their attached testimony. See GAO audits 2010 thru 2005. The reality is that our government’s financial management infrastructures have collapsed and all federal agencies are using manual Excel spreadsheets to prepare all government financial statements. In addition to the above information, additional documentation is available in my three OSC cases and one MSPB case against EPA and the U.S. government.