Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner is about to testify before a Senate subcommittee, and her prepared remarks contain some interesting stats on the growing workload at the Office of Special Counsel:
- OSC expects its overall caseload in fiscal 2012 will be 10 percent higher than last year.
- Waste, fraud and abuse whistleblower disclosures will likely be 32 percent higher this year than in fiscal 2011.
- OSC expects to see a 6 percent increase in prohibited personnel practice cases this year. In fiscal 2011, OSC received 2,583 cases, which itself was a record.
- Overall filings have jumped 30 percent over the last three years.
While OSC’s workload is increasing, Lerner said its budget remains flat, and could decline in fiscal 2013. OSC is trying to deal with those challenges by increasing its use of alternative dispute resolution to avoid costly and time-intensive litigation and recruiting Presidential Management Fellows. OSC also turned its underused library into work space for employees.
“Even with our modest budget, the OSC gets a lot of bang for the buck,” Lerner is set to testify.
Stay tuned for more information on the 2013 budgets for OSC and the Merit Systems Protection Board.
