As part of his active return to the White House, President Donald Trump has fired a number of inspectors general from an array of federal agencies. Trump appears to have sidestepped a legal obligation to inform Congress about the firings. More than that, the move is raising concern that Trump’s administration is being staffed by political loyalists and removing checks on the president’s power. One person sounding the alarm is Lucy Lang, who has been New York State Inspector General since 2021. Lang spoke with WAMC's Ian Pickus on Monday.
Before we talk about Trump's actions, could you just tell our listeners what inspectors general actually do and why the public should care about that work?
There is a joke in the IG community that goes, if you've seen one IG, you've seen one IG. We're a very funny bunch, as you can imagine. But the truth is that IGS vary widely. There are about 74 inspectors general federally, but there are myriad inspectors general across the country who serve like I do, overseeing state government, who oversee things like infrastructure projects, who oversee specific agencies. So the core thing that all of those IGs have in common is the mission, which is to expose fraud, corruption, waste and abuse in whatever government entity it is that they are overseeing. And the way that IGs do that is through a combined set of tools that can include audits or investigations or reports that are public.
Now, at the time that we're speaking, President Trump hasn't really explained this move, but I could imagine him making the argument that, you know, an IG is like a great white shark and it's got to keep moving so it will find something to make the administration look bad. Is there any truth to that sort of view on the IGs’ work?
Well, what's actually interesting is that because oftentimes IGs’ work is semi-historical, that it would be more likely that anything that the current IGs are working on that comes out in the next year or so is likely something that happened under the last administration's watch. So, no, I don't think that that is the kind of appropriate framing for it.
Why are you alarmed by Trump's firings of 17 or so so far?
This is not a partisan issue at all, Ian. This is really a good government issue. And you know, we have had various iterations of IGs dating back to the revolution when George Washington imported an IG to help get the ragtag Continental Army in order. And really the modern IGs who serve in the civilian context as we know it were created in the aftermath of Watergate at a time when trust in government was incredibly low as it is now, and part of the reason was to ferret out the kind of fraud and corruption that Americans had been become fed up with, and to work towards restoring the best ideals of democracy.
So what could go wrong in government, you know, state or federal, without an independent inspector general within a given agency?
Public monies could be poorly spent, they could be stolen, they could deviate from the purpose for which they were allocated. Individual people could be committing acts of corruption. Entire agencies could be stalled and rendered less efficient. There is really a whole host of horrible outcomes that could come from not having experienced nonpartisan people leading the watchdog agencies that were created for the purpose of solving those problems.
I know you typically like to stay out of the political process, but what moved you to weigh in on this?
My colleagues on the federal side are the ones who are subject to it, and rightly, this has the potential to have a chilling effect on the work that they do. Of course, the ones who haven't yet received termination letters could any day. And I felt that it was incumbent on me as a protected inspector general who has had the laws properly followed, and in that I am, although appointed by the governor, she is not able to remove me from office, and that's one of the protections that enables me to investigate the executive branch which I am charged to investigate. So as another inspector general who believes very deeply in the importance of having independent oversight in government, especially in a moment when there's such a crisis of confidence in government, I felt that it's important to make sure the public understands what the implications are for this decision, which is not only illegal, but really undermines democratic norms as we've come to know them.
So as you said, in New York, the IG is appointed by the governor. Some governors have taken advantage of that in recent memory. Do you feel that your independence has been maintained in the almost four years that you've been in this role, with Governor Hochul taking office at the same time more or less?
When I was asked to serve as inspector general, the governor and I were both very clear that I was going to be an independent inspector general, and the fact that we did not have a pre-existing relationship helped facilitate that, of course, but we also made some substantive changes to the way we operate, which include that I don't attend cabinet meetings with the commissioners whose agencies I oversee, which is a departure from the past. We don't vet our public reports through the executive chamber and take edits from them in advance of publication. We truly do operate independently from the agencies we oversee and from the executive chamber. That's best practice in oversight, and I am glad to say that I have been able to maintain that independence over the course of the three years and change that I've had the good fortune to serve New Yorkers as inspector general.
Back to the federal level. Trump has long complained, going back to his first term, about the “deep state.” And, you know, the IGs are not elected officials. How do we know that they are carrying out the position on the level?
There are provisions requiring public reporting of much of IGs’ output. And if you were to look through the websites of any of these federal IGs you would see the incredible amount of work that they have been conducting in recent years. And, you know, I think about something as kind of core to government functioning as the Department of Veterans Affairs and the IG for that department put out a series of public reports fairly recently, one of which was basically an audit of wait times at VA hospitals across the country. There was also then an individual inspection of one particular hospital, which included quality of care delivery and the wait times. And then there was, separate from that, an investigation into staffers at a VA hospital who were misreporting wait times in an effort to meet quotas and things like that. So those are just examples of, even in one agency and on one sort of issue area, of the impact that an IG can have. And every one of those federal inspectors general has been doing all three of those kinds of work around the agencies that they are charged with overseeing.
You actually published an op-ed about this threat to federal IGS by the new president, and you, in that essay, called for Congress to step up and reassert the independence of inspectors general by creating explicit protections against presidential retaliation. I can wager, given the Republican Congress right now, that's not very likely. So what fears do you have about what will happen if that isn't the case in response to these firings?
Well, there have been, historically, people on both sides of the aisle who have fought for inspectors general. When President Reagan fired a bunch of inspectors general early in his administration, there was pushback from a bipartisan coalition, and ultimately, he rolled back most of those firings in response. Senator Grassley has been a very outspoken advocate in favor of protections for inspectors general, and there's precedent for how the system currently in place is supposed to work. The prior administration did have someone terminated and followed the protocol, which is to say the president sent a letter to Congress with 30 days’ notice enumerating that there had been a founded investigation into a toxic workplace that was created by one IG in particular. And Congress did not object. And after 30 days, the removal went into effect. So it can work if it is properly followed.
That said, the way that the statute reads now, which, not for nothing, was partially enacted in response to the firing of five IGs nearing the end of President Trump's last term. The law requires that there be a substantive rationale for firing and that it be detailed and case specific. That is a step in the right direction, but there are state statutes and others that say that people can only be fired as IGs, for example, good cause and there would be a definition of good cause. There also are IGs who have set terms of, say, seven years, so that they're not subject to the terms of their appointing entity. There are some IGs who have term limits, which can also have a positive impact. So all of these things are on the table, and I think should be looked at very seriously, to tighten up the statutes as they currently exist, although in the current case, it's kind of irrelevant, because even the existing statutes have been violated.
