The so-called revolving door between government and business has not undermined safety investigations by federal automobile regulators, a watchdog report says.
The inspector general of the Department of Transportation scrutinized links between the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and former agency officials who have gone to work for the auto industry. He also examined ethics training and related practices for officials who left the auto industry to join NHTSA.
After reviewing 65 safety defect investigations involving officials who switched sides, the inspector general found no impropriety.
“Overall, we found no evidence suggesting undue influence or pressure on NHTSA’s employees conducting safety defect investigations, and NHTSA had adequate controls in place to ensure employees’ compliance with ethics requirements,” Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel III wrote in an April 4 letter accompanying the report.
As The New York Times reports, the inspector general launched the revolving door investigation at the behest of Congress last year, which responded to worries that the exodus of senior agency officials to jobs at Toyota led to lax investigations of the automaker. Scovel is conducting a separate investigation, expected to be concluded this year, focusing specifically on the agency’s Toyota safety investigation.
The new report identified a substantial number of ex-government officials working for automakers. It found that, since 1984, 40 officials left NHTSA for jobs at car companies or their law firms. Over the same time period, 23 auto executives made the opposite switch and, in each case, the person in question was in charge of investigating or monitoring safety defects at NHTSA.
However, after interviewing 18 of these current NHTSA officials, the inspector general’s office found no evidence that their dealings with former coworkers influenced their conduct. As a result, the report offered no recommendations for changes at NHTSA.
