“Your e-mails to the HR professionals, which focused on particular candidates after the recruiting process had been implemented, undoubtedly contributed to the extreme lengths that the HR office went to in order to achieve certain results. “I find that your own actions played a role in this,” Lightfoot continued. “The HR office has lost sight of its primary professional function and seems convinced that its value to KSC is judged by its ability to please individual managers,” Lightfoot wrote in June 2014. The findings prompted Lightfoot’s letter to Cabana, which criticized his personal involvement in the illegal hires and a “recurring cultural issue that exists between the HR office and many elements of KSC senior management.” The investigation, completed in April 2014 at a cost of more than $30,000, ruled out charges of nepotism, which the federal government defines as giving preferential treatment to family members.īut the investigator’s report, portions of which NASA provided to FLORIDA TODAY with the names of some participants blacked out, found that “communications by senior leadership were a significant factor in HR giving preferential treatment to the prime candidates.” NASA also took the audit’s findings seriously and launched an internal investigation. “We take any referral from OPM seriously.” “OSC only receives a handful of referrals from OPM each year about potential prohibited personnel practices in the federal government,” said Nick Schwellenbach, a spokesman for the Office of Special Counsel. The Office of Special Counsel would not comment on the status of any investigation involving KSC, but said cases referred by the Office of Personnel Management are rare. Office of Special Counsel for investigation, saying it had identified a potential pattern of recruiting abuses at KSC aimed at helping NASA contractors get civil service jobs and possible nepotism. Records show each was picked over military veterans or non-veterans who were either more qualified or entitled to first consideration for the jobs, which had salaries starting from about $47,000.Īfter its routine audit in March 2013, the Office of Personnel Management presented the three cases to the U.S. Sandy Adams, whose district included KSC. Two had worked for KSC contractors, the third for then-U.S. One of the hires was the daughter of KSC’s procurement director, who reports to Cabana, and one was the spouse of another KSC manager. Two “primes” Cabana recommended won those jobs, and months later a third candidate Cabana had expressed interest in was selected as Associate Director Kelvin Manning’s secretary. NASA records show Cabana identified and lobbied for three people who became known internally as the “primes,” or prime candidates, to fill openings as his executive assistant and Deputy Director Janet Petro’s secretary in mid-2012. “OPM’s report also identified three illegal appointments in the Director’s Office that I believed may have resulted from a willful intent to violate veterans’ preference laws or to circumvent fair and open competition,” NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot wrote last year in a “Letter of Counseling” to Cabana, referring to the results of a 2013 audit by the U.S. Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana and other senior leaders were more involved than previously disclosed in illegal spaceport hires that may still be subject to federal investigation, according to records FLORIDA TODAY obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.Īuditors found the hires of three administrative assistants supporting Cabana and two other high-ranking officials on the fourth floor of KSC headquarters suggested a deliberate effort to get around federal laws requiring competition and priority consideration for certain military veterans.
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