The boldest step Secretary Kempthorne announced as part of his 10 Point Plan is the creation of a Conduct Accountability Board, which would review the "fairness" of employee conduct and discipline cases within the Department.  However, the person that Kempthorne assigned to head the new board, Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Mark Limbaugh, resigned his post just two days after Kempthorne's announcement (incidentally, Limbaugh's departure leaves three out of five assistant secretary positions at Interior vacant-- what is going on here?).

Some of the other points in the Secretary's plan are a direct response to the ethical violations of former former number two Interior Department official Steven Griles, who was sent to jail two weeks ago for lying about his role in the Abramoff lobbying scandal.  For example, the 10 Point Plan includes a review of the Department's policies governing contact with lobbyists and a proposed end to the so-called "Indian tribe lobbying loophole."

Other points in the plan seem to speak indirectly to the conduct of former Deputy Assistant Secretary Julie MacDonald, who gave internal Fish and Wildlife Service documents to industry lawyers and others.  One point concerns the "appropriate government use of computers."

The Plan also includes one item addressing the political appointees who run the various branches of the Interior Department.  It is a somewhat defensive reminder about the current system used to ensure their appropriate conduct.  The statement reminds Department employees that all presidential employees received annual ethics training.  Clearly, if Julie MacDonald and Steven Griles were receiving such training over the past several years, it wasn't sinking in.

In the end, what is most notable about the Plan is what it does not include.  Kempthorne made no mention of the need to redress the errors that political appointees like Julie MacDonald forced the Fish and Wildlife Service to make regarding protection for several imperiled species, including the greater sage grouse, Gunnison sage grouse, white-tailed prairie dog, and Gunnison's prairie dog.  The Secretary's plan also included no provisions to protect the role of science and scientists in endangered species decisions, even though Julie MacDonald's most outrageous ethical violations involved her altering the findings of her staff biologists and forcing reversals in science-based decisions to protect certain species.  In some cases, it even appears she did so for personal financial gain.  All this from a political appointee with no formal scientific background herself.

It is difficult to take the Secretary's 10 Point Plan seriously when he has done so little to clean up the outstanding fiascos left over from Julie MacDonald's reign.  It is also difficult to stomach a 10 Point Plan that seems to focus more on the conduct of Department employees than of their politically appointed superiors, the source of all the scandals recently rocking the Department.  As Jeff Ruch, director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, observed, "The problem at Interior is not its civil servants but its political appointees, so Secretary Kempthorne's crackdown is like blaming poultry for predation by foxes in the henhouse."