Time: Thu Oct 09 12:56:18 1997
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Date: Thu, 09 Oct 1997 12:50:39 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: IRS Rank and File Say Hearings Intensified Morale Problem
SHUT THEM DOWN NOW, I say!!
/s/ Paul Mitchell
http://supremelaw.com
<snip>
>
>IRS Rank and File Say Hearings Intensified Morale Problem
>
>AP
>09-OCT-97
>
>WASHINGTON (AP) Tales of IRS misconduct that emerged from Senate
>investigative hearings came at a time when morale already was low, members
>of the agency's rank and file say.
>
>>From Texas to Michigan to Maryland, a cross-section of IRS workers said
>they were distressed that the Finance Committee hearings cast too broad a
>brush over 102,000 workers.
>
>As House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, and Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La.,
>prepared to kick off a "National Tax Reform Tour" Friday in Ohio, some
>Internal Revenue Service employees still bristle over the tone of hearings.
>
>
>"I feel like I am watching, hearing and reading the Salem witch trials,"
>said Sandra Leigh, a Florida agent who poured out her thoughts in a letter
>to Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla.
>
>"We love our country, express our opinions and file and pay our taxes. ...
>Do not, however, lump all the hard-working, dedicated employees in the same
>pot," Leigh said.
>
>Leigh's comments she uses a pseudonym for a last name after she says her
>life was threatened reflect the dismay of several veteran workers who
>discussed the climate at the IRS in the aftermath of the hearings.
>
>The hearings featured allegations that pressures on agents to meet
>collection goals lead to wide abuses of taxpayers. Some witnesses described
>emotional turmoil as they tried for years to resolve tax issues that
>weren't their fault, only to have their credit damaged or face potential
>seizure of their homes.
>
>Acting IRS Commissioner Michael Dolan apologized before the committee and
>promised reforms. But reaction from rank-and-file agents was mixed. Some
>said they've never heard of such abuses.
>
>"I can't say I've had that same experience," Denice Dickey-Vaughan, a
>collections staffer with 13-years in the Richmond, Va., office, said in a
>telephone interview.
>
>Joe Boyd, a 30-year veteran in St. Louis, said the hearings amounted to "a
>few isolated incidents for a 100,000 employees who are basically trying to
>enforce the laws that Congress writes."
>
>"There is no doubt that stuff goes on," said Boyd, the local IRS union
>chapter president. "You can't paint with such a wide brush that the agency
>as a whole encouraged that."
>
>IRS workers have faced strains due to budget cuts and staff reductions.
>During that time, criticism of the agency was unprecedented, said former
>Commissioner Margaret Milner Richardson.
>
>"We've had three years of reductions in the budget and a hiring freeze on
>top of that," said Larry Bergquist, a revenue office and adviser with the
>IRS in Detroit. "We've had less and less people to do the job. And you've
>got a bunch of employees who feel badly because they are getting beat up in
>public."
>
>Low morale has alarmed many who represent taxpayers before the IRS.
>
>"We believe the current state of employee morale is so low that it
>jeopardizes this perception of adequate representation of the public
>interest," said Joseph Lane of the National Association of Enrolled Agents,
>licensed as taxpayer advocates to the IRS.
>
>The IRS' mishandling of a $3.3 billion computer modernization project
>served as a vivid example of the agency's problems. But there have been
>successes. There's an improved system to file taxes via touch-tone
>telephone, better accuracy on its toll-free help lines and, by all
>accounts, a smoothly handled 1997 tax filing season.
>
>Senate Finance Chairman William V. Roth Jr., R-Del., said he sought
>"constructive criticism criticism with the intent to improve, not destroy."
>
>
>But the head of the IRS workers' union, Robert Tobias, called for an end to
>"IRS bashing."
>
>"Because I can tell you, with this bashing the amount of threats and
>assaults on IRS employees will go up and is going up," said Tobias,
>president of the National Treasury Employees Union.
>
>He said 3,200 cases of assaults and threats occurred in the past five years
>against agency workers, such as a 1995 attempted bombing of an IRS office
>in Reno, Nev., by tax protesters.
>
>Leigh, the Florida agent who works out of the Fort Pierce-Fort St. Lucie
>office, recalled how a tax protester filed a lien against her home as she
>and her husband tried to refinance it. Another sent a letter proclaiming a
>"declaration of war" against her.
>
>"It scares you," Leigh said. She arranged for the local sheriff's
>department to patrol near her home to make sure her daughters get home from
>school safely.
>
>
>
>
>
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===========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris : Counselor at Law, federal witness 01
B.A.: Political Science, UCLA; M.S.: Public Administration, U.C.Irvine 02
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