Archive - July 15, 2023

July 14, 2023 Sweeping Peace Corps legislation headed to the U.S. Senate includes a provision allowing the agency’s director to suspend without pay any employee who engages in serious misconduct. The proposal follows a USA TODAY investigation that exposed for the first time a leading Peace Corps official who remained on the payroll for 18 months after he went on a reckless drunk driving spree that left a Tanzanian mother dead. That case was one of several troubling instances behind the provision in the new bill, which was approved by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week, according to Rep. John Garamendi (Ethiopia 1965-67), D-Calif. who introduced the bill in the House. “We noted that the director did not have sufficient administrative authority to deal with profoundly disturbing problems,” said Garamendi, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia. John Peterson, now 68, received more than $250,000 in salary and . . .