Senators call for GAO probe into Feds' treatment of nuke workers

Five others join Salazar, Allard in signing letter

By Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published September 24, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Pressure is mounting for the investigative arm of Congress to probe how the federal government is treating sick nuclear weapons workers.

Meanwhile, officials from the agency responsible for compensating the workers have been to Capitol Hill this week defending their work.

In a letter to the Government Accountability Office last week, a bipartisan group of senators asked for an investigation, citing a recent report in the Rocky Mountain News that detailed "a pattern of ongoing decisions and rule changes within the 8-year-old program that consistently made it more difficult for sick and dying workers - or their survivors - to be compensated."

This week, officials from the U.S. Department of Labor, which administers the program, have been meeting with key congressional staff to defend the department's work on the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program.

Department spokesman Loren Smith said officials there had not seen the senators' letter, but that "it is our practice to cooperate with members of Congress on inquiries they may have."

The lawmakers who signed the letter to the GAO include Colorado Sens. Wayne Allard, a Republican, and Ken Salazar, a Democrat, plus Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.; Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.; and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. All but Reid are members of the Senate committee with oversight of the Labor Department.

GAO officials have told lawmakers it would take six months to complete such a probe.

This is the second request for a GAO report since the Rocky's series, called Deadly Denial, was published in July.

The Rocky found that the Labor Department was withholding information that could help claimants, changing rules midstream, and delaying cases for so long that in one of every 17 cases that was eventually approved, the claimant had already died.

A week after the Rocky's report, Colorado Reps. Mark Udall and Ed Perlmutter requested a GAO investigation. The request last week from the senators asks the GAO to review four specific areas:

* Delays in the amount of time it takes to process claims.

* Costs of processing claims.

* The credibility of agency policies in making decisions on claims.

* Transparency in the process, including claimant's access to pertinent data about their claims and the clarity of the process.

The compensation program was created in 2000, reversing the government's half-century policy of fighting all claims of work-related illness in the nation's nuclear weapons complex.

Then, President Bill Clinton said the program should be "compassionate, fair and timely" and that the government should help ill workers with their claims and "ensure that this program minimizes the administrative burden on workers and their survivors."

The program went through a major reform in 2004, when Congress fired the Department of Energy for spending $90 million to compensate 32 people.

Today, the Labor Department oversees the entire program, while scientific analysis is performed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. NIOSH is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Labor officials have suggested that most problems with the program rest with NIOSH.

However, many of the issues reported in the Rocky investigation stem from regulatory decisions made by the Labor Department.

Some of those key decisions came at a time when internal communications show the department was under pressure from the Bush administration to cut costs in the program.

Some 600,000 Americans helped build the nation's nuclear weapons during World War II and the Cold War.

More than 165,000 sick workers - or their survivors - have filed for compensation so far. One in four of them has been compensated, totaling more than $4 billion.

frankl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5091

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