Inspector General

President Reagan on Friday named acting Inspector General Charles Gillum of the General Services Administration to be inspector general of the Small Business Administration. Gillum, 47, would succeed Mary Wieseman.

WASHINGTON — The government's watchdog for the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program disputed suggestions the bailout fund would turn a profit for taxpayers and warned that many small banks are still struggling to repay. "It is a widely held misconception that TARP will make a profit," said a report by Christy Romero, the special inspector general for TARP. The Obama administration has said TARP has turned a profit on about $205 billion injected into banks, but still projects losses for the entire fund.

Director-adapter Michael Schlitt's version of "The Inspector General," Nikolai Gogol's tale of mistaken identity in 19th century czarist Russia, inhabits the realm of the absurd, peopled with grotesque human monsters. As presented at the Actors' Gang, its results are mixed: a well-considered, elegantly hilarious first act followed by an unrestrained, excessively indulgent second act. A tighter second half would really lift this well-acted interpretation into absurdist heaven.

WASHINGTON - It was a simple scam: Coleen Newton-White, a government contractor, and her husband would take General Services Administration credit cards from the motor pool at Ft. Monroe, Va., and use them to sell fuel at a discount to cash customers who pulled up to service stations five at a time. Between 2008 and 2010, the scheme netted the couple almost $300,000, according to court records. Although the gas scheme is a world away from the nearly $823,000 spent on a lavish Las Vegas-area conference put on by GSA official Jeff Neely - including a mind reader, sushi and in-room parties - it is an example of the fraud that the procurement and property management agency faces regularly.

After the 1965 Watts riots, the McCone Commission recommended the creation of an office of inspector general made up of civilians and Los Angeles police officers who would operate outside the regular LAPD chain of command. It would have handled all civilian complaints against officers, bringing credibility to the process, and it would have reported directly to the police chief. It was a good idea. It was never implemented.

President Bush said Thursday he is keeping Paul A. Adams as inspector general of the scandal-plagued Department of Housing and Urban Development. Adams has been HUD's inspector general since 1985.

Jerry Thorton, deputy inspector general for the Los Angeles Unified School District, has been named acting inspector general, officials announced Monday. Thorton, a former FBI agent, was second-in-command in the district's internal investigative unit for four years. He temporarily takes over the top post after the resignation of Don Mullinax, who is leaving this month after five years in the job.

Last week three events coalesced to provide a compelling status report on the Los Angeles Police Department: A jury relied on gang member testimony to convict three Rampart officers on corruption charges; a detailed Rampart study recommended stronger civilian oversight to prevent future police corruption; and the Police Commission considered rules to weaken the oversight authority of its own inspector general. All this indicates a need for change.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Jeffrey C. Eglash, a prosecutor specializing in public corruption and government fraud cases, was selected Friday by the Los Angeles Police Commission as its next inspector general. Eglash, 38, brings a strong investigative and prosecutorial background to the civilian watchdog position, commissioners said.

RTD directors, under fire for poor supervision of the huge agency, agreed Thursday to reach into the federal government's mass transit bureaucracy and hire an inspector general to help them avoid more trouble in running the buses and building the Metro Rail subway. Sources said the board, meeting in closed session, decided to offer the job in coming days to Ernest Fuentes of the Urban Mass Transportation Administration's San Francisco office.

WASHINGTON — The General Services Administration's inspector general is investigating possible kickbacks and bribes in an agency already shaken by a scandal over a pricey Las Vegas-area conference, he told a congressional hearing Monday. In response to questions from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Brian Miller said he was investigating "all sorts of improprieties, including bribes, possibly kickbacks. " "We do have other ongoing investigations," Miller said, adding that witnesses told him waste was "widespread" in the GSA's Pacific Rim region, which staged the Las Vegas-area conference for nearly $823,000 in 2010.

The city of Los Angeles could get an additional $350 million in savings and additional revenue by going after uncollected fees, better managing properties and contracting with local businesses, according to a series of reports released Thursday. The recommendations were made by a volunteer commission appointed by the City Council in 2010. The seven-member group also strongly recommended that city leaders appoint an inspector general to oversee collections. Los Angeles officials have been trying to hire someone for the position for more than a year.

A Senate subcommittee chairwoman is calling for a federal review of the Obama administration's award of a $433-million sole-source contract for an experimental smallpox drug. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), in a news release issued Wednesday by her subcommittee, said that she has asked the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate. McCaskill's news release cited "serious questions" about the contract, noting that it had first been intended for only a small business and that, ultimately, it was awarded without competition to a larger company.

A federal watchdog agency said Bank of America Corp. should reimburse the government for losses on certain mortgages issued by Countrywide Financial Corp., the high-risk home lender that BofA acquired in 2008. The inspector general's office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development audited 14 loans granted by Countrywide and determined that half of them contained "material underwriting deficiencies. " The Federal Housing Administration, which is a unit of HUD, provides insurance to lenders against mortgage losses.

Arrests of federal prison guards soared nearly 90% over the last decade, possibly because of poor hiring practices during a 25% increase in prison growth, the Justice Department's inspector general reported. Misconduct investigations doubled, and more than half of the offenses were committed during the officers' first two years on the job. The inspector general recommended that the Federal Bureau of Prisons improve its background investigation of job applicants and find better ways to assess rookie officers.

State auditors have urged the Los Angeles Community College District to seek a criminal investigation into allegations that the selection of an inspector general to police the district's troubled construction program was rigged. Jeffrey Brownfield, chief auditor for state Controller John Chiang, told the district's Board of Trustees that an independent probe was needed to determine how the district allegedly violated its own bidding rules in choosing someone with no experience in audits or investigations over higher-rated applicants.

Health and Human Services Inspector General Janet Rehnquist was not legally entitled to receive a government handgun and law enforcement credentials but got them anyway, an internal investigation has concluded. The daughter of Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was guilty of "administrative failures," the investigation found. The Justice Department reviewed the findings and said it would not prosecute.

Pentagon investigators have begun an inquiry into whether the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which helps develop cutting-edge technology for the military, showed favoritism when it gave $1.75 million to a company co-owned by the agency's director and run by her father. The Pentagon's inspector general said it would examine DARPA's contracts over the last two years with RedXDefense, a Maryland-based contractor that builds devices to detect trace amounts of explosives. The technology is used to help find roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A state audit of campus construction at the Los Angeles Community College District has found $140 million in questionable spending, including at least $28 million sunk into projects that were later abandoned because of poor planning. In the audit released Wednesday , state Controller John Chiang challenged the district's use of voter-approved construction money to pay for public relations, public art and other purposes he deemed inappropriate. Document: Audit of L.A. community colleges In addition, the college system's elected trustees set up a "passive, perfunctory and ineffective" citizen oversight system for the $5.7-billion program to rebuild its nine campuses, the audit found.