Board Meeting Transcripts 2004

 

COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: 
Frank B. Strickland, Chair 
William O. Whitehurst (advisory member) 
Lillian Moy (advisory member)

OTHER BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: 
Thomas A. Fuentes 
Robert J. Dieter 
Herbert S. Garten 
Maria Luisa Mercado 
David Hall 
Michael D. McKay 
Florentino Subia

STAFF AND PUBLIC PRESENT: 
Helaine M. Barnett, President 
Victor M. Fortuno, Vice President for Legal Affairs 
Leonard Koczur, Acting Inspector General 
Laurie Tarantowicz, Assistant Inspector General and Legal Counsel 

C O N T E N T S
P A G E
Approval of agenda.	4
Consider and act on the process for the selection of an LSC Inspector General.	5
Public comment.	33
Consider and act on other business.	40
Consider and act on adjournment of meeting.	41

MOTIONS:

Pages  4,   41

P R O C E E D I N G S

MR. STRICKLAND: Let me call to order a meeting of the Search Committee of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation.

As you know, we have recently completed our search for president of LSC with an extraordinarily successful outcome, and I'm actually going to address that in more detail at the board meeting, so I won't do it now.

The purpose of today's discussion is to -- well, first, let me entertain a motion for the approval of the agenda of the meeting for today.

Is there a motion to approve the agenda?

M O T I O N

MR. HALL: So moved.

MR. STRICKLAND: And a second?

MR. GARTEN: Second.

MR. STRICKLAND: Moved and seconded. Any discussion?

(No response.)

MR. STRICKLAND: All those in favor, say aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. STRICKLAND: Opposed, nay.

(No response.)

MR. STRICKLAND: The agenda is approved.

Now, consider and act on the process for the selection of an LSC inspector general.

Most of us on the board, I think, while we've heard reports from the inspector general and we have at least in my case a general understanding of the role of the inspector general, the authority in the law, qualifications for the position, and so on, but I will confess that I'm not absolutely comfortable with my level of knowledge on that.

So I thought it might be informative to the members of the committee and other members of the board if we heard a brief discussion of the existence of the inspector general in the Act, either in the IG Act or in the LSC Act, or some relationship between the two, the statutory language, if you will, and then also I'm going to ask Len and Laurie and Vic to flesh that out a little bit for us.

So why don't the three of you come forward, then, if you're in the room, Vic and Laurie.

Well, let me give you a timeline. We're starting just a little bit late, so we may have to let this go over, but we had intended for our meeting to last about 45 minutes, and I want to divide the time between hearing something about the nature, the duties, qualifications, and so on, the statutory basis, and then we, I think, would entertain some comments from our two advisory committee members, Lillian Moy and Bill Whitehurst.

Bill, as you know, is the chairman of the ABA SCLAID Committee, and Lillian, tell me if this is right, is the executive director of Legal Services of Northeastern New York?

MS. MOY: That's Legal Aid Society.

MR. STRICKLAND: Legal Aid Society, in Albany.

MS. MOY: Exactly.

MR. STRICKLAND: A veteran legal aid lawyer who used to work in the Georgia program, so she comes well-qualified with that background.

Vic, Laurie, and Len, why don't you tell us, whoever wants to pick up the ball, but remember we've got a little bit of time constraint, so we want to divide the time between hearing the duties and responsibilities and the statutory basis, and then we want to shift to hearing from some other people as to their views.

MR. KOCZUR: Mr. Chairman, I think it would be good if Laurie could start with talking about the statutory basis, the IG Act, and then the additional responsibilities that were given to the LSC IG in the '96 appropriation --

MR. STRICKLAND: Okay, go right ahead.

MS. TARANTOWICZ: Thank you. I can try to be brief, as you suggested, and then afterwards, if you would like us to provide anything in writing, we would certainly be happy to do that.

I can, I think, start by giving a little historical perspective.

The original IG Act was enacted in 1978, and it basically made offices of inspector general in the 12 major departments and federal agencies, and then that was expanded, with the '88 amendments, to include what are called designated federal entities, including the Legal Services Corporation, and some of them are actual federal entities and some of them are more like LSC, which is obviously not.

Basically, what was intended was to move into an independent unit within the Corporation the responsibility for auditing and investigations aimed at preventing and detecting fraud, waste, and abuse, and in addition, to be sort of an arm of the Corporation that would look at activities aimed at improving efficiency and effectiveness.

As part of our auditing function, we're responsible for oversight of all auditing that occurs -- for instance, you heard earlier today briefly about the corporate audit -- and we ensure that activities are carried out consistent with government auditing standards which are established by the comptroller general, the head of the General Accounting Office.

In 1996, with the appropriation, we were provided additional responsibilities, including some direct responsibilities for compliance, oversight, mainly the Appropriations Act, and responsibilities over all of the audits that LSC grantees have.

LSC grantees are, as you know, ordered to have an annual audit, which includes both a financial audit and a compliance audit -- that is, compliance with laws and regulations -- and we provide the guidance for those audits and ensure that they meet government auditing standards and that the audits are adequate. When we receive them, we review them and refer any findings for followup to LSC management.

And then, as I said, we were also given compliance authority. That is, we can go on site, the Office of Inspector General itself, and do some compliance work. For instance, currently, we're doing the program integrity audits that Len has briefed you on over the last few months.

MR. STRICKLAND: What about -- thank you for that explanation.

What about qualifications for the position? Are there any such qualifications written into the Act or regs?

MS. TARANTOWICZ: The Inspector General Act, which I always bring with me, which unfortunately I did not bring with me today, I'm sorry --

MR. STRICKLAND: I should have warned you that we might ask you about this. I apologize for that.

MS. TARANTOWICZ: No, that's quite all right.

It provides a list of qualifications that are -- it is a rather, I think, long list that includes, you know, experience in law, accounting, obviously auditing, basically general areas such as that. It does not require each area to be met.

MR. KOCZUR: I think basically it's not very specific.

It provides a wide -- it's general, so the intent of Congress when the Act was passed was not to limit the type of person who could be selected for an IG position, so it's very broad.

It's more management oriented, with a background in various disciplines, but not requiring background in any specific discipline.

MR. STRICKLAND: To your knowledge, looking across the agencies, large or small, that have IGs, would you say on balance more of those people are accountants by background and experience, or what would you say?

MR. KOCZUR: I think there's a variety, a range now.

Earlier on in the '80s and '90s, it was heavily weighted towards audit type backgrounds, accountant type backgrounds.

It's switched now more to general management type experience.

There are a number of, I'm not sure of numbers, but some agencies have lawyers as their inspector generals. A number of agencies have people with investigative backgrounds.

For example, when I left FEMA, the inspector general there had retired from the Secret Service. He had been on presidential body guard duty, vice president duty.

So that's the kind of people there are right now. I don't know that there's any one specific type anymore.

As I said, originally, it was oriented more towards accountants and auditors, and then it swung to more general type of discipline, with general management experience, with evaluative type experience, that type thing.

MR. STRICKLAND: Okay. Does any member of the committee or a board member have any -- Vic, do you have anything to add to that, or did that cover it?

MR. FORTUNO: No, I think that covered it fairly well. I think one just clarification on the qualifications.

I don't know that there's anything In the IG Act as originally promulgated or as amended in '88 that sets out specific minimum qualifications, as in must have a license to practice law or must be a certified public accountant.

I think that it's more a description of things, that the successful applicant should have experience in one or more of these areas, such as auditing, accounting, management, law, so that there is no specific qualification that's required, but it does provide some kind of general aspirational kinds of qualifications.

MR. STRICKLAND: Okay. Any committee member or board member have questions for this panel?

MR. DIETER: This is really a fundamental question, but my understanding of the IG, and I may have this completely wrong, is that you're part of an agency that is assigned over here, sort of like if we had an office that said we must have a first lieutenant from the Army here, we would have to go to the Army and say, "Select somebody to come over here."

MR. KOCZUR: No, that's not the case at all.

MR. DIETER: It's just the status and responsibility of the person that's hired, but they're not supervised by a department somewhere?

MR. KOCZUR: No. By law, the IG reports and is supervised under the general supervision, which is undefined, of the board.

So the board appoints the inspector general and then provides the general supervision, with the independent side of it being the inspector general reports to the board as well as to Congress.

So it is a very unique organization, that's what I wanted to say, that it's unique to the government, basically, I think, although I think the state and local governments are now establishing inspector generals, so the private sector really doesn't have a counterpart to it.

And I think it's important that someone that knows, that has worked in an IG office somewhere, I don't know that has to be a mandatory qualification, but certainly that type of experience, because given the way the law is written, the IG essentially can do what he wants, and that's what, when the first IGs functioned, that's what they did, and it created tremendous amount of problems -- the first IGs, I'm talking about in the mid, the early to mid-'80s -- and they just weren't very effective.

Since that time, the IGs have become more -- recognize that they can't be out there charging ahead without regard to the agency they're working with or anything, and they have developed a more collaborative approach to their work.

I think it's important that someone understand that you can't come in and say, "I'm the IG and you have to give me that information, because I'm entitled to it." You may be entitled to it, but if you're going to be successful, that's not the way to do it; and that's a history on the federal IG side that shows that using that approach didn't work.

And if you notice, compare the IGs now to then, it's a much softer approach, more collaborative approach than in the past.

MR. STRICKLAND: Go ahead, Maria.

MS. MERCADO: Yes, and I think that the inspector general for Legal Services Corporation in itself is even different from other inspector generals, because of the additional responsibilities that were added by Congress in the '96 appropriation, because in effect, if you look at it, if any outsider is looking at it, a lot of the work in compliance, when the inspector general checks our grantees regarding any kind of compliance with laws or regulations or statutory programmatic responsibilities of the grantees, they're almost acting in a programmatic role. They're doing what we used to do totally, under our Office of Compliance.

And so it is a little bit different animal. It's note quite exactly like other inspector generals in other agencies, because Congress has given them a whole lot more oversight of legal services grantees than other inspector generals in other agencies would have.

And so the question of what kind of individual, what kind of duties or what kind of experience or skills would they need, given that you have a legal entity that you have oversight of, not just the money part, the auditing and accounting, but you also have predominantly a law firm for poor people in this country, then when you're looking at the inspector general and the inspector general part of their duties under the '96 amendments, appropriations bill, is to be in compliance with the laws and the regulations and the policies of the Corporation, then that person needs to have some substantive knowledge of law and issues and, to some extent, in the area of dealing with legal services in some form or the other.

MR. KOCZUR: All I could say, while it's specific in the IG Act that the -- I'm sorry -- in the LSC appropriation, that the IG has the responsibility you just articulated, in practice in the federal agencies, inspector generals frequently look at compliance with regulations, compliance with laws and regulations, as part of their normal duties.

It's not spelled out. Certainly it's more implicit authority than the explicit authority that's in the LSC appropriation.

The other thing, too, as you pointed out, it does reach that programmatic area, but on the other hand, the IG Act prohibits the inspector general from engaging in operational activities of the agency, of LSC.

So there is some conflict there, and I would hope, I hope we never have gone over that line, and I would hope anyone else wouldn't go over that line.

But you're right, exactly, there is some difference in LSC than in the other agencies.

MR. FORTUNO: I think, if I may, what has been alluded to is that the Inspector General Act has a fairly broad scope of responsibility -- fraud, waste, and abuse -- but that the Inspector General Act made clear that the entity shall not transfer to the inspector general program operating responsibilities.

That opens up the question of what is a program operating responsibility?

The compliance functions, monitoring functions of the sort described in the Act -- that is, ensuring compliance with the relevant requirements and restrictions and providing for the independent monitoring programs, those, because they're spelled out in the Act as functions of the organization, I think largely are viewed as program operating responsibilities.

That is, that's what the Corporation does, in addition to grant making, oversighting, is what it's created to do so, so it's a program operating responsibility, and that may not be transferred by the agency to the inspector general.

However, the Congress may, of course, and to some extent in '96 did, say, in addition to the duties that we have under the Inspector General Act, you will have some additional duties carved out for you, and that's I think what Laurie was referring to when she alluded to some compliance functions having to do with the audits and compliance audits of grantees.

Is that right?

MR. KOCZUR: If I could just expand on that for a second.

The IG, we can't require a grantee to do anything. If we find a violation of the regulation, the only thing we can do is recommend that they take corrective action.

Now, LSC, on the other hand, can require them to take that corrective action, or alternative corrective action.

So that is a big difference, I think. We recommend, but we can't require, whereas the Corporation can require.

MR. STRICKLAND: Any more questions for -- sorry, Herb.

MR. GARTEN: Are you acting under any regulations promulgated by any agency?

MR. KOCZUR: I operate under the LSC regulations, but beyond that, no. There are not any government-wide regulations governing the inspector generals.

Now, there are two organizations made up of the IGs that produce standards and kind of -- well, produce standards that the IGs should follow, particularly in the audit area, but that is strictly a voluntary type thing. The standards are not voluntary, but the participation is voluntary.

But there is no one organization that has oversight of all the inspector generals.

MR. STRICKLAND: Okay, any other questions from board members? Bill?

I tell you what. At this point, why don't we shift our model here a little bit, and Bill and Lillian, our advisory members of our Search Committee, we would first hear any questions or comments that you might have, and then if there are others in the audience who might have some views on the subject of the LSC inspector general that would be of interest to the, or that you'd like to tell us, we'd be glad to hear from you.

But first, why don't we hear from Bill and Lillian.

MR. WHITEHURST: I'd like to ask some questions, if I may.

MR. STRICKLAND: Sure, go ahead.

MR. WHITEHURST: I have a couple of questions.

First, I'd like to know a little bit more about the history of the IGs' interaction with boards.

My understanding is, we've only had three IGs since the inception of LSC, and if you could maybe enlighten us or brief us a little bit on how that historically has progressed, and what is the relationship between the board and the IG's office, both -- we've talked about it more in writing than we have in reality, and I'm curious how it works as a practical matter, and how it's worked in the past.

MR. KOCZUR: Maybe Vic and Laurie could address how it was in the past.

I've been with the Corporation almost six years now, and I've been acting for three years, acting as inspector general, and my interaction with the board generally is that I have an informal relationship with the chairman.

When I have things that I think he needs to know about, I communicate with him. For example, we had a recent meeting with congressional staff that I briefed him on, as well as the president, and that kind of thing.

I keep informed and keep the board informed at the board meetings of the work we have going on, the audit work in the open session and investigative work in the closed session, and I think there's a communication back and forth between us.

And in the past, the way the president and I have communicated, and I believe my predecessor worked the same way, is that I would meet on an irregular basis with the president.

Basically, if either the president or I thought we needed to get together because something important came up, or just because we hadn't talked for a while, we would get together and talk informally about what my office was doing and what the president thought we should know about what the Corporation was doing.

So I'm not sure how things worked before then. Maybe Vic or Laurie could address that.

MR. FORTUNO: The Office of Personnel Management is charged with issuing annually designations of head of the entities for IG Act purposes with the 1988 amendments to the IG Act.

The '88 amendments are the ones that required the establishment of an OIG here at LSC and at 30-some-odd other what were described or designated in there as designated federal entities.

We were required to establish an IG. The Office of Personnel Management initially designated the president of the Corporation as head of the entity for IG Act purposes, which meant that it was the president who appointed the inspector general and the inspector general served under the general supervision of the president.

Shortly after that, I think it was within two years of that, the designation by OPM was changed from president to board, which meant that at that point the head of the entity for IG Act purposes, that designation was changed to the board.

The board, in the early days, decided that. in order to exercise that supervisory role over the IG, it needed to have some mechanism in place to allow for more contemporaneous interaction than just a report at every meeting every two to three months, so what was done was the board established an IG liaison. I think initially, was it a person or a committee?

MS. MERCADO: Originally, it was a committee.

MR. FORTUNO: In any event, there was an IG liaison in the early days.

Later in time, what was done was, rather than have to pick a member or a subgroup of the board to serve as that liaison, what was done in more recent days was that the vice chair of the board, it was decided that the vice chair of the board would serve as IG liaison; and so for some period of time, that's the way it functioned.

That was never formally changed, but I think that there was -- in time, that kind of lapsed, and was not really adhered to.

The last formal action taken by the board in terms of a mechanism in place to interact with the IG on a regular basis was this designation of the vice chair of the board to serve as the IG liaison?.

But I think in the last few years, it's just been an even less formal arrangement, and I think that, as Len characterized it, I would agree with that, that the president and the IG interact regularly.

The IG keeps the board by way of the board chair, and sometimes more generally the board, informed as to, currently informed as to its activities and any salient developments in its operations.

MR. KOCZUR: Does that answer your question?

MR. WHITEHURST: Yes. My second question was, you mentioned you have an independent function, and you also consult directly with Congress, and I'd like for you to elaborate on that.

I'm not sure I understand exactly how that works, and who do you report to with the Congress, and from the discussion this morning, I got the impression that your budget is even separate and direct from Congress, and if you could maybe elaborate a little bit on how that works.

MR. KOCZUR: The second question first, because that's the easiest.

Yes, we have a separate line item in the LSC budget that appropriates a specific amount of money for the IG's office, that only can be used for the IG's office. The number we request is generated by my office and provided to the comptroller, who then includes it in the budget that goes forward.

As to the Congress, we have a reporting requirement. Twice a year, we produce a semi-annual report, which is really a summary of the work we've done in each of those six-month periods.

That goes to, I believe, our oversight committee, and I'm not sure of the other specific committees it goes to. Well, obviously it goes to the board and the corporate management, the president and the various vice presidents.

You used the term consult. We don't really consult with the folks on the Hill. I'm not really sure how to describe the relationship.

Last Tuesday, we were up meeting with a staff member of our oversight subcommittee who had questions about some work we were doing about our response to a congressional request, and that type thing, and basically it was us going up talking about those type things.

Again, it's on an irregular basis. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I would say, and 100 percent of the time since I've been here, it's initiated by the committee staff in a call either directly to the inspector general or through our congressional liaison people.

Under the law, there is some provision that -- it's called a seven-day letter, where if an inspector general finds something so just terribly bad, nm the management of the Corporation won't take any action on it, then the inspector general is required to have that reported to the Hill.

The process is a letter, it's called a seven-day letter, is sent to the Corporation, which has seven days then to respond to the Congress, I believe to our oversight committee, but I'm not certain of that, as to either why they're not taking the action the inspector general is recommending, or taking action on the problem, or what they're going to do about it.

Now, this is kind of just a really, a tremendous power, and virtually, it's never been used by any IG. It's just, it's something that was put in the Act, and it just doesn't work in practice.

And of course, we send all our audit reports to the oversight committee and various other committees that might be interested in it.

MR. FORTUNO: The Inspector General Act actually provides some guidance in terms of what the semiannual report of the inspector general to the Congress has to contain.

It also provides that the semiannual report isn't sent directly by the IG to the Congress. Instead, the IG submits that to the board of directors as head of the entity. The board then attaches to it or includes with it its own comments, and that package is sent up to the Hill.

So that you have the report of the inspector general, which is prepared and given to the board in final once it's done, and then the board has an opportunity to prepare its own comments, and those are transmitted along with the report of the IG to the Hill, and that happens twice a year.

MR. STRICKLAND: Bill or Lillian, anything else?

MR. WHITEHURST: One more.

You alluded to standards that you must comply with, and apparently there's no job description that exists for this, and so those who are on this committee making -- you know, trying to get a grasp of doing the actual selection, if we don't have a job description, would it help us to have available the standards that you referenced?

MR. KOCZUR: The standards I was talking about, well, actually, there's two.

For the audits perspective, there's the government auditing -- Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards, which are about 78 pages long.

(Laughter.)

MR. STRICKLAND: That's not what you were looking for Bill, I know.

MR. KOCZUR: It's really directed towards the performance of the audits, and you have to perform your audit in accordance with those standards, very similar to what the private sector does, from the AICPA.

The other standards that have come out -- and standards is probably too strong a word, but it's guidance produced by these committee that I mentioned, that direct -- for example, they lay out the rules for the peer reviews that we have to have every three years, where another IG comes in and looks at our work in that three-year period and decides whether or not we've complied with the standards.

So that's basically the types of standards we're talking about.

I really don't think the auditing standards would help you at all.

MR. STRICKLAND: On the subject of a description, there have been a couple of postings that were used in prior activities like we're embarking upon here, and we'll probably have those shortly for distribution, but it's --

MR. FORTUNO: They are being copied as we speak, should be brought into the room in the next four or five minutes.

MR. STRICKLAND: Okay.

MR. FORTUNO: Will be distributed to everyone. There will be two, I think it's two postings, one from '89 time frame or so, another from '91, and a more recent occupational profile.

All of these documents are LSC documents. That is, developed internally and used by the Corporation, but not anything that's statutorily mandated or that was obtained from anyone outside the organization.

MR. STRICKLAND: We'll make those available.

Herb?

MR. GARTEN: I didn't quite understand when you talked about aspirational standards earlier. I got the impression that they were standards separate from accounting standards that your group had put together, group of peers.

MR. KOCZUR: Yeah. It's more guidance than standards. I shouldn't have used that word. It's things like on -- the peer review is one example. They've had some guidance on doing evaluations as opposed to audits, and on doing investigations.

MR. GARTEN: Do you think those standards would be, separate from the accounting standards or auditing standards, would be of help to the committee?

MR. KOCZUR: They're about the same. They really get detailed about the performance of the work, and it's more directed towards the people doing the individual audits, investigations, evaluations, as opposed to the management of that function.

MR. STRICKLAND: Yes, Lillian.

MS. MOY: I just want to say that I hope the committee will have the opportunity to consider the issue of whether we would want the IG to be a lawyer or someone who has experience in or support for the mission of the Corporation, so I hope we'll have a chance to talk about that in a little more detail.

And I wondered if we do have funding available to help in a professional search?

MR. STRICKLAND: Yes, we do.

MS. MOY: Okay. Great. Thanks.

MR. STRICKLAND: I confirmed that with our treasurer and comptroller, so we do.

Now, Chairman Hall of the Provision Committee, I don't want to impose. I know you have some speakers, and we're a little bit off schedule.

It may be that we'll have to convene a meeting of this committee by conference call rather than impose on the schedule that David has for us this afternoon, so since it is already 2:15, and that's the start time for your group, I think that -- I'm sorry. Is it 2:30? So we have a few minutes.

Well, let's then impose on our break, then, instead of that. I'm sorry. I've been confused on the way the schedule is working today. There is a 15-minute time period in here.

So, all right. At this point, then, while we have some people in the audience, if you want to make any comments, anybody from NLADA or any other organization would like to address the committee relative to the inspector general position -- Don, did you have anything you might want to tell us?

MR. SAUNDERS: We're very comfortable with our representation.

MR. STRICKLAND: All right, fine. Any other member of the audience that might want to address the committee?

(No response.)

MR. STRICKLAND: All right, then. I think that my view of what we should do here is take a look at these previous descriptions. I guess Vic may now have those.

We can circulate the postings that we've used before, and then we would need to address the question of whether we want to engage Laurie and Vic and so on.

You all can be excused. I don't think we're going to have any more questions for you, and thank you for your good information today, that enlightened us I think more so than we have been up 'til now.

Yes.

MS. MERCADO: Mr. Chairman, maybe one of the things that the committee might also look to is that it might look to similar agencies or entities to Legal Services and see what some of their particular requirements or qualifications for inspector general might be. That might sort of give you a broader viewpoint.

MR. STRICKLAND: Some comparisons, right.

I think what we need to decide, though, as a committee, is one, do we want to engage a professional search firm, and you just raised that question. I take it your view would be that we -- is that your view, that we should perhaps do that?

MS. MOY: Yes, I think that I'd like us to spend a little -- I don't know whether we could get agreement on the type of person we're seeking in the inspector general, but once we have the time to have that discussion, if we have time now we can, but I think it would be helpful, because I think we want to broaden the pool, make sure it's as diverse as possible, make sure the person has the range of experience that will serve the Corporation best.

MS. MERCADO: And we're budgeted for it.

MR. STRICKLAND: Yeah, we do have -- we contemplated that in our budget, recognizing there would be a search process for both positions, so unless there's objection from a member of the committee, I think that -- one other members who is not here is Professor BeVier -- but unless there's objection from any member of the committee, I think we would move to have discussions with a search firm, and I would propose that we continue with Heidrick & Struggles.

We were all -- I think it's unanimous with the committee that we were impressed by the work that they did, and the result that they got, so nothing speaks like results, so --

MS. MERCADO: Well, I mean, it also cuts the learning curve for the search firm, because they've already worked with us --

MR. STRICKLAND: Yes.

MS. MERCADO: -- on what it is that the mission of Corporation is and what we're looking at and what our responsibilities are.

MR. STRICKLAND: Right. The lead professional on the presidential search was herself a lawyer who had handled some legal aid cases when in practice, so -- and she now knows us a lot better than at the beginning of the process.

Yes, Rob.

MR. DIETER: On the compiling the list of agencies that are similar to ours, there's I think reference to a couple of them in the letter to Congress.

Who was going to put that together and when would we expect to look at that and see what --

MR. STRICKLAND: I don't know who is best suited for that within our entity.

Perhaps we could call on our new president, see if she might coordinate, pull that together for us, and that is other agencies, or you could consult with Len on that, as well, other agencies --

MS. MERCADO: The search firm can help with that, too.

MR. STRICKLAND: Beg pardon?

MS. MERCADO: The search firm can help with that, too.

MR. STRICKLAND: But we might create a list of agencies similar in size to -- in other words, the Department of Agriculture's inspector general might not be a good model, but --

MS. MERCADO: Right, but in science and maybe possibly a substantive area.

MR. STRICKLAND: Right. And we could took a look at what their criteria might be for their IG.

Yes.

MR. GARTEN: If I heard correctly, the 1988 amendment included a number of other organizations in addition to Legal Services Corporation.

MR. STRICKLAND: Yes, that's right, smaller agencies.

MR. GARTEN: We'd have a list --

MR. STRICKLAND: Well, that's a ready-made list.

MR. GARTEN: Yes.

MR. STRICKLAND: That's a ready-made list.

MR. KOCZUR: Mr. Chairman?

MR. STRICKLAND: Yes.

MR. KOCZUR: If I could, I can produce a list of the, as Laurie referred to, the designated federal agencies --

MR. STRICKLAND: Oh, all right.

MR. KOCZUR: -- and then indicate which ones are similar in composition to LSC.

For example, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the head of the agency is a board of directors, just as it is here, so that kind of thing.

I might add, though, that one of these designated federal agencies is the Postal Service. I'm not sure that was one you'd be interested in.

MR. STRICKLAND: Let's don't use that as an example.

MR. KOCZUR: But I'll produce the list and provide it to the president next week.

MR. STRICKLAND: All right. So it sounds like the works is already done, then, because there's an existing list. We made that easy for you, Len.

MS. BARNETT: Thank you very much.

MR. STRICKLAND: All right, is there any other business, then, of the Search Committee?

(No response.)

MR. STRICKLAND: As I see it, without objection from the committee, but please speak up, we would proceed to have a discussion with Heidrick & Struggles about this search, and circulate whatever their proposal might be for doing the search in terms of cost and other terms, and then get about the business. Okay?

Yes, sir.

MR. WHITEHURST: I just was handed this. This is the occupational profile, and it really is a type of a job description.

And I'm wondering if you envision the committee actually reviewing this --

MR. STRICKLAND: Yes.

MR. WHITEHURST: -- and coming up with an occupational profile for this particular selection?

MR. STRICKLAND: I think we would do that in conjunction with professional advice from Heidrick & Struggles. Maybe we can improve -- take this and improve upon it --

MR. WHITEHURST: Right.

MR. STRICKLAND: -- and then use that as our posting for this go-around.

MR. WHITEHURST: Good. I think that would be helpful.

MR. STRICKLAND: Right. That's what we would intend to do.

All right. Any other questions, comments from the committee?

(No response.)

MR. STRICKLAND: If not, thank you for your participation, and thanks to Lillian and Bill for joining us again.

Let's see, is there anything else, any other business?

(No response.)

MR. STRICKLAND: We already asked for public comment. I want to make sure we've covered our agenda as published in the Federal Register.

All right, then, we'll entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting of the Search Committee. Is there such a motion?

M O T I O N

MR. HALL: So moved

MR. STRICKLAND: Seconded, and we're adjourned. Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, at 2:22 p.m., the meeting was concluded.

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