ASA: DEA REPORT NOT THAT BAD

WASHINGTON - The White House said in a report this week the Drug Enforcement
Administration, headed until recently by Arkansan Asa Hutchinson, is unable
to measure whether it's doing a good job in combating illegal narcotics.

Part of a governmentwide performance assessment, the White House Office of
Management and Budget concluded the counternarcotics agency "is unable to
demonstrate its progress in reducing the availability of illegal drugs in
the U.S."

DEA managers are not held accountable for achieving results and the agency's
goals lack specifics, the report said. It concluded the agency needs to come
up with new ways to measure its effectiveness.

Hutchinson dismissed the report, which was released Monday as part of the
federal budget. He said he did not view the assessment as critical of his
leadership.

"I don't see it as a bad report card," he said. "I see it as an inconclusive
judgment on their part.

"The report reflects not that there's been a lack of success, but that we
have been unable to measure to their satisfaction the level of
effectiveness," Hutchinson said.

Hutchinson said the DEA measures itself in part through drug-use trends, the
availability of drugs, and the price and purity of drugs.

"I would refer to our independent auditors for DEA, who have given a clean
audit for our management and our financial integrity," Hutchinson said.

DEA critics jumped on the report, however, saying it exposed the agency's
weaknesses.

"The report was pretty clear in that it indicated that this rather large,
well-established bureaucracy doesn't appear to be delivering a very good
bang for the taxpayer buck," said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of
the NORML Foundation, a marijuana advocacy group. "There is no data
supporting that any of their efforts have had discernible success."

Hutchinson, a former Fort Smith congressman, was sworn in last week as
undersecretary for border and transportation security in the new Department
of Homeland Security after serving as DEA administrator since August 2001.

In an interview, Hutchinson acknowledged a disagreement between the OMB and
the DEA over how the agency's progress is measured in reducing drug use.

"What OMB wants to be demonstrated is that there is some tie from our drug
seizures and arrests to reducing drug availability in the United States,"
Hutchinson said. "The question is how to measure this fairly and
accurately."

Trent Duffy, an OMB spokesman, called the debate a "healthy outcome." He
said the DEA evaluation is not an indication of its performance but rather a
conclusion that there are not enough performance measures in place.

"All it means is that the DEA is not able to demonstrate its progress,"
Duffy said. "The DEA could be outstanding or not, but there was not enough
measurement in place to make a determination."

The Bush administration introduced the assessment process in August 2001 and
applied it for the first time this year. The OMB evaluates a program's
purpose, design, planning, management, results and accountability to
determine its effectiveness, a process used to help White House officials
make budget decisions.

Of the 234 programs reviewed, more than half - including the DEA - received
a rating of "results not demonstrated."

"The assessment tool is designed for grade inflation," Duffy said. "If
everybody got As, I don't think everyone in America would think the federal
agencies are performing at the highest level."

Will Glaspy, a DEA spokesman, said the two agencies are collaborating on
establishing a set of criteria to measure progress.

"It's a case of us needing to better define our successes," Glaspy said.

President Bush proposed $1.559 billion in funding for the agency in his
fiscal 2004 budget blueprint. The 0.8 percent increase over the 2003 budget
estimate represents the smallest proposed rise for the DEA since 1988,
according to Glaspy.

"The budget simply reflects the tight budget circumstances of the government
and the fact that terrorism is the No. 1 focus, appropriately so, of this
administration," Hutchinson said.