May 28, 2012 – The director of the National Weather Service has stepped down after an internal investigation found that the organization’s financial unit was misappropriating funds from program accounts and shifting them to weather offices around the country.
Jack Hayes retired on Friday. MSNBC first reported Hayes’s departure on Sunday.
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) — the ranking member of the Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard subcommittee — issued a statement Friday calling the investigation’s findings “unacceptable.”
“The deeply troubling revelation that senior staff at the National Weather Service, which provides indispensable storm and weather forecasting, have been conducting improper and potentially illegal transfers of taxpayers’ money is unacceptable,” Snowe said.
“I am further alarmed that the investigative report raises fundamental concerns that the core operations of the National Weather Service are underfunded, and that the current process in the Department of Commerce is broken, as it ‘did not encourage questioning or provide independent channels for reporting dubious budget decisions.’ At a time when our country is experiencing unprecedented fiscal challenges this assessment is simply intolerable,” she added.
Read the full story at Politico.