This post was shared with GAOUnion.org by GAO retirees who are plaintiffs in the GAO Auditor/Analyst Age Discrimination Class Action lawsuit against the GAO (Federal Court Case No 87-3538)

Age Discrimination Has Undermined GAO’s Most Experienced and Knowledgeable Auditors/Analysts as well as the GAO Itself

1. The cancer of age discrimination has been growing for decades within one of the most important agencies in the United States Government—the Government Accountability Office (GAO).  This cancer has undermined GAO’s ability to improve Government efficiency and accountability.  Age discrimination at GAO involves the often subtle, yet widespread, continuing, and systematic actions taken to deny or limit opportunities on the basis of age to GAO’s most experienced and knowledgeable auditors and analysts. The end result is that GAO, once a premiere investigative agency and renowned as the “watchdog agency of the federal government” and “the U.S. taxpayers best friend” has become a toothless and non-functional failure as evidenced by the present state of the lack of “accountability” in the government and each federal agency.

2. This class action lawsuit is being brought by the approximately 7000 older GAO auditors/analysts who have been, or are currently, employed by GAO over the past 30 years. Each plaintiff and each similarly situated person, as an older GAO auditor/analyst, before retiring or being constructively discharged from the GAO, suffered years of humiliation watching lesser qualified persons err in the responsibilities assigned by those in charge of the agency.

The Violation of the Public Interest - GAO Age Discrimination Has Also Undermined Government Efficiency and Accountability

3. As a matter of the public interest, huge damage has been done directly to older auditors/analysts at GAO which has limited their capability to assure better accountability, integrity, efficiency, and performance in the federal government.  The damage is now evident in the denial from positions of responsibility and removal from the agency by illegal means of about 7,000 older, experienced auditors long before the appropriate time of their departure from the federal service. And these persons, now missing from the scene, as a group, represented a cadre of experts who have knowledge of the language, the nomenclature, and the intricacies of the federal system; of governmental policies, programs, organizations, and operations; and of accounting, investigation, and controls necessary to assure the effectiveness of the government in fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities and obligations to the American people.

4. That loss, of the corporate and governmental knowledge and expertise of these experienced auditors/analysts, is now evident in the hue and cry by the public for “accountability” in government and in major financial and other institutions regulated by the government. Examples are now rife with the failures of federal and quasi-governmental institutions who reasonably could have been the subject of audit and accountability by these persons who now are long gone from the federal service or are currently denied positions of responsibility within the agency. Overt examples include the banking and financial crisis; the sub-prime mortgage meltdown; and the efficacy of institutions such as Fannie Mae; Freddie Mac; the Federal Reserve System, especially with respect to its role in the bailouts of AIG and large banks; and SEC and its failure to detect the Madoff situation. This constitutes but a brief list serving as an indicia of a more general failure to investigate and control by a truly effective GAO.

5. What else could be expected, when 7,000 older professionals at the agency, virtually all of GAO’s front line senior accountability auditors/analysts, are intentionally humiliated, called old men and women, and removed from meaningful roles and duties which are then provided to those less experienced, less knowledgeable, and frequently inept young persons? The effect of this particular age discrimination at this agency is clearly far reaching, although virtually impossible to measure and foresee in final result.

6. The resulting degradation of the agency has recently been subject to public hearings, and adverse public comment by Congress. Congress has reacted with statutory reversals of a part of the pattern of discriminatory conduct alleged herein, and also enacted the GAO Act of 2008 to remediate some of the effects of the most apparent, and egregious, pay and personnel decisions taken by GAO senior management in 2005. Simultaneously, the Comptroller General who initiated such pay and personnel decisions resigned in March 2008, ending the 25-year domination of Arthur Andersen alumni at the helm of the agency. Unfortunately, it does not appear that the resignation of the Comptroller General has ended the ill-management of this vital agency, as the pattern of age discrimination is still widespread throughout the agency.