NWS head retires after critical report

The head of the National Weather Service has retired, one day after the U.S. Commerce Department reported "misconduct" in the service's expenditures. John Hayes retired Friday after investigators concluded four senior NWS staff members, operating "outside the bounds of acceptable financial management," had spent funds for purposes other than those for which the funds had been budgeted -- although there was no evidence of fraud, The Washington Post reported Monday. Hayes had served as assistant administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and director of the weather service since 2007. Deputy Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank reported last week the NWS had reallocated to 122 weather offices funds Congress had designated for other purposes. The investigation followed anonymous reports about misallocation of funds in 2010 and 2011 that preceded the resignation last year of the weather service's chief financial officer, the Post said. U.S. Sen. Olympia Snow, R-Maine -- the ranking member of the Senate Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard subcommittee -- said in a statement the Commerce Department 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." NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen conceded the weather service had reprogrammed funds without notifying Congress but he said the investigation concluded "no funds were used on inappropriate items, they were simply used in different categories than originally budgeted. The investigation found no evidence of corruption or personal financial gain in these actions. We do not believe any money was moved out of the National Weather Service." Richard Hirn, a lawyer for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, said the weather service had reprogrammed as much as $30 million a year to avoid the necessity of furloughing weather station personnel. He called it a case of "robbing Peter to pay Paul," the newspaper said.