HUD’s System of Policing Ethics ‘Weak,’ Congressional Study Says

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has an “extremely weak” system of policing possible ethics violations by key officials and consultants, according to a congressional study released Tuesday. It said that HUD Secretary Jack Kemp was partly to blame.

“It appears that, to a large extent, it is business as usual at the Department of Housing and Urban Development,” said Sen. David Pryor (D-Ark.), who requested and released the General Accounting Office report. “I am faulting Secretary Kemp.”

Pryor said he believed Kemp, who took office in February, was committed to reforming the agency but that it did not appear that all HUD employees were following his lead.

Kemp aides acknowledged that problems persist in the agency’s internal policing efforts but said Kemp and his deputies were making steady improvements.

The GAO, in a draft report to a Senate subcommittee, said it reviewed the files of 62 consultants hired by HUD from 1986 to 1989 and that 52 had not filed required financial disclosure forms.

The agency, the investigative arm of Congress, said also that HUD had received 62 disclosure reports from employees who are required to file them but that, more than 100 days later, the agency had not reviewed any of them. Ethics law requires that the reports, designed to uncover possible conflicts of interest, be reviewed within 60 days.

Francis Keating, HUD’s general counsel, said that most of the disclosure reports had been reviewed since the GAO had checked in late September. Keating said that Kemp ordered Tuesday that the rest be scrutinized by Jan. 15. He could not say how many needed to be reviewed.