IRS Retracts Good Evaluations of Critic

Disputing its own years of positive job ratings, the IRS now says in court documents that a revenue agent who testified before Congress about taxpayer abuse had actually done inferior work since 1991.

The Houston-based agent, Jennifer Long, responded with two sworn statements from current and former Internal Revenue Service employees who say they have suffered retaliation because of their testimony before the Senate Finance Committee.

“This is business as usual at the IRS,” Long said in a telephone interview Thursday.

The court filings are part of a federal race and age discrimination lawsuit Long brought against the Treasury Department in 1997, shortly after her Finance Committee testimony. The IRS motion to dismiss the case was filed just as the IRS was moving April 15 to fire Long, a decision she called retaliation for her testimony. It has since been rescinded by top agency officials.

The attempt to dismiss Long was based on a 13-page summary of poor performance since 1997, when she first received unsatisfactory notices after nothing but stellar annual reviews.

Now, the IRS says in the court documents that Long’s supervisors had questions about her work for years in spite of those positive annual ratings.

“Since 1991, all of [Long’s] managers have found her work consistently lacking in more than one critical element,” the agency says.

Two managers say they gave her positive annual reviews because they’d only been her superiors for a few months and didn’t feel comfortable changing her rating to a negative. One IRS manager, identified as Barbara Craney, said she was preoccupied with her own medical problems and was afraid to single Long out.

“Although I gave Mrs. Long this fully successful rating, I did not think she deserved it,” Craney says in court documents.

In her response filed Tuesday, Long calls the IRS allegations “part of a pattern of undue oppression and harassment.”

Long’s performance, the response says, was “evaluated as satisfactory until the very day that her supervisor became aware she was flying to Washington to testify before the Senate Finance Committee.”

In addition, IRS employee Michael Ayala and a former employee, Matthew Issman, say in sworn statements filed with Long’s papers that they suffered retribution after their congressional testimony.

Ayala, an analyst in the Atlanta office with 32 years’ experience, says he was demoted after word got out that he might talk to CNN for a program on IRS misconduct.