Your Tax Dollars at Work
The National Park Service announced Friday that it has removed its superintendent at Gettysburg National Military Park and reassigned him to work in a cultural resources office as an assistant to the associate director. His job duties have not yet been determined.
John A. Latschar said Thursday that his demotion was in response to the public disclosure of Internet activity in which he viewed more than 3,400 “sexually‐explicit” images over a two‐year period on his government computer — a violation of department policy. The misconduct, which Latschar acknowledged in a sworn statement, was found during a year‐long investigation by the Interior Department’s inspector general and was documented in an internal Aug. 7 report obtained by The Washington Post.
The reassignment came after a Post report Monday about the results of the investigator’s forensic analysis of Latschar’s computer hard drive, which showed “significant inappropriate user activity” and numbered the “most sexually‐explicit” images at 3,456.…
David Barna, spokesman for the National Park Service, said Latschar’s annual salary of $145,000 and his pension will not be affected. The cultural resources office is based in Washington, but Latschar will commute from his home in Gettysburg to a Park Service office about 30 miles away in Frederick, Barna said.
Hey, can I get that deal? If I download 3,500 pornographic images on my office computer, can I get reassigned to a telecommuting job with no defined duties at my current salary and pension? As superintendent of a very visible national park, Latschar had a job with a lot of pressure, lots of criticism, management challenges, etc. Now he’s going to be some sort of undefined “assistant to an associate director in a cultural resources office,” but he won’t have to actually go to the cultural resources office, and he’ll still get the same pay and benefits he was getting for doing a real, stressful job. Does anyone in the federal government ever get fired?
