WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is seeking to learn whether the inspector general’s office for the nation’s commodities and futures regulator has corrected the flaws that led to a failed peer review.
Grassley wrote to Commodity Futures Trading Commission Inspector General A. Roy Lavik, seeking an update and briefing on corrective actions since the inspector general’s office failed a routine peer review for auditing procedures.
“I remain concerned that the CFTC’s Office of the Inspector General’s preparation for the peer review and the subsequent responses to the deficiencies may call into question whether the recommendations for improvement have been fully implemented,” Grassley wrote.
In March 2011, the inspector general’s office failed a peer review over properly documenting its budget requests and meeting certain quality control processes.
Grassley is a long-time advocate for strong inspector general offices to weed out waste, fraud and abuse across the government. Grassley is the author of the successful provision included in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that required inspectors general to publish the results of the peer reviews in their semi-annual reports. The measure was meant to hold the inspectors general accountable. It accompanied another change making it harder for agencies with commission-appointed inspectors general to remove their inspectors general, giving the inspectors general more independence from agency interference.
Grassley is a member of the Agriculture Committee.
The text of Grassley’s letter is available here.
