Six months after 44-year-old Minnesota resident Sonia Pitt was fired by the Minnesota Department of Transportation in November for travel improprieties and misuse of state resources, she was hired by the federal Transportation Security Administration as a transportation security specialist.
Two months later, TSA fired Pitt after receiving information from the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Officials at TSA declined to comment on any aspect of Pitt's application
for employment or what tipped the agency to investigate her hiring.
While director of homeland security for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, Pitt took an unauthorized, state-paid trip to Washington, D.C., after
the Interstate 35W bridge collapse. She didn't return to Minnesota for 10 days. MnDOT said she also misspent $26,400 in state funds and made 94 hours of
personal calls from her state-paid cell phone to a Federal Highway
Administration official with whom she had a relationship.
One week after firing Pitt, the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security, which runs TSA, announced that they have taken big strides in vetting potential hires: from now on, DHS officials will Google the backgrounds of job candidates.
No, this is public relations spin from Google's Communications Director. This is DHS policy.
Homeland Security officials are still investigating why Pitt continued to
hold a federal security clearance after her MnDOT dismissal as well as whether cronyism was at play in her hiring at TSA. Hopefully, the investigation is being executed by human contacts and not just some high-caffeinated Google searching.
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