Mary Frances Berry refuses to acknowledge her term as a member of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights is up. Peter Kirsanow has an article outlining her refusal to depart and other troublesome character flaws. During Berry's rein as chairman (12 years) "a culture of unaccountability has become and entrenched feature of the commission's administrative character", revealed by numerous governmental reviews. Some snippets:
In 1997, a Government Accountability Office report noted that management is in disarray, projects are poorly managed and take years to complete, spending data isn't maintained by office, program, or function and the agency's policies and procedures are unclear. GAO couldn't even verify project spending because of the commission's indecipherable record keeping.UPDATE: Decmeber 8th: Berry steps down.
The GAO's 2003 review of the commission showed that the commission had also failed to comply with the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993. The civil-rights commission has not updated its strategic plan since 1997.
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Just last week she released a deeply flawed and biased report critical of the Bush administration's civil-rights record, despite the fact that such report had been rejected by the commission at its November 12 meeting (the report was originally scheduled for release just days before the presidential election but Republican commissioners succeeded in tabling it, noting that the report on the Clinton civil-rights record wasn't released until after his second term, expressly to avoid politicization). Why even vote on reports if the chairman will simply issue them as she sees fit?
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