Dingell Fuming at the EPA

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, is thinking there's something mighty peculiar going on in the inspector general's shop at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Seems Bill Roderick, the acting IG, launched a plan back in June to cut 60 of his 360 employees -- especially auditors, criminal investigators and the like -- via buyouts or resignations.

But there doesn't seem to have been much "fact finding or analysis to ensure" the office's functions would not be impaired by this, Dingell said in an April 23 letter to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson.

Dingell said he and some of his subcommittee chairs were concerned by Roderick's "adventuresome and sweeping buyout approach" and by his comments that offices will be closed, when Congress is actually unlikely to cut the budget. Twelve people have already accepted the buyout, we're told.

"Is it correct," Dingell asked in the letter, "that in the same approximate time frame (December 2006) that you were considering Mr. Roderick's employee buyout package, Mr. Roderick was given a bonus that exceeded $15,000?"

It turns out that, despite all these awful budget woes, Roderick did indeed get a $15,000-plus bonus, something never given to Nikki Tinsley when she ran the place from 1998 to last year.

That may have had something to do with Tinsley's penchant for writing critical reports about the EPA's efforts after the World Trade Center collapse, about moves to weaken power-plant emissions regulations, and about the $170 million funding shortfall for money to clean up the most toxic Superfund sites.

Could be Tinsley, known as simply too independent and aggressive, probably set a bad example for staff, leaving no alternative but to make cuts.

In any event, Dingell is expecting some answers today. Stay tuned.

Schmoozing, Valenti-Style

The death last week of Jack Valenti, the Lyndon B. Johnson aide and longtime motion picture industry lobbyist, recalls a great Hollywood-Washington connection in the 1970s centered on ladies man Henry A. Kissinger.

An Oct. 15, 1971, article by then-Washington Post gossip columnist Maxine Cheshire about Kissinger, then 48, talked of his "girl problems" with Judy Brown, a 27-year-old movie starlet "best known for her role in an X-rated Danish sex film." Brown had made public their relationship and Kissinger called her "a publicity maniac," and said that "when these ladies start using me for publicity, that is when I decide to terminate the relationship."

The article featured a photo of Kissinger between a photo of Brown and another of a Playboy regular nicknamed "the Bosom."