http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/05/07/0507meshcdcglobal.htmlCongress questions CDC hiring delays
Policies, politics leave overseas posts unfilled, says agency watchdog
By ALISON YOUNG
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/07/07
Concerned about an "alarming rate" of vacancies among the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's overseas staff, the chairman of a Congressional oversight committee has asked for information and assurances that the hiring problems are being fixed.
"Because of the importance of these posts, the delays would be of concern even if they were due only to bureaucratic inefficiency," U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a six-page letter Friday to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. "However, it appears that many of the problems are rooted in counterproductive policies or politics at your Department's Office of Global Health Affairs." HHS is the parent agency of the Atlanta-based CDC.
Citing an internal CDC memo obtained and published April 25 by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Waxman has asked for Leavitt to provide him a wide range of documents and information about positions caught up in hiring delays and about the policies and bureaucracies snarling the situation.
The internal CDC memo describes a tangled bureaucracy and a lack of qualified staff contributing to nearly half of the agency's global jobs being vacant. The memo said that currently just 166 of the CDC's 304 overseas positions in 53 countries were filled. At least 85 would likely remain unfilled until 2008, according to the eight-page memo written by Dr. Stephen Blount, director of CDC's Coordinating Office for Global Health, on April 13 and sent to CDC Director Julie Gerberding.
HHS officials were not immediately available for comment Monday. Tom Skinner, a spokesman for CDC Director Julie Gerberding, who was copied on Waxman's letter, referred questions to HHS.
Waxman, in his letter, expressed particular concern about delays caused by a requirement that CDC seek special approval for each overseas assignment from HHS' Office of Global Health Affairs. The office is headed by William Steiger, a senior political appointee and godson of former President George H.W. Bush. Steiger has come under fire in the past for allegedly micromanaging the overseas work of the department's scientific divisions.
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