Operation Rocky Top and Operation Tennessee Waltz were investigations by the FBI into a political operation. The Rocky Top investigation was conducted back in the 1980s and was about the illegal occurrences involving Bingo charity and the illegal bingo licenses sale as described by Revolvy. The Rocky Top investigations led to more than fifty convictions which included several state legislators and politicians. Two of the convicted legislators committed suicide before they were brought to justice or trial. Tennessee Waltz FBI investigations, on the other hand, occurred in the mid-2000s and ran to a span of six years before it came to closure. In the Tennessee Waltz case, the investigations started with a court clerk office, and in the process, a contractor accepted money for a job that was never accomplished. The Tennessee case was about invoice scam. The investigations with time spread to include public figures like state senate. It was discovered that the lawmakers were accepting bribes from lobbyists. The Tennessee case led to the establishment of a new independent ethical commission and new state ethics laws as presented in the Tennessee Waltz case files by the FBI (2008).
Proper ethical conduct and accountability is a critical part of public administration. According to Milakovich and Gordon (2013), Bureaucratic accountability is not about being above the control of the checks and balances put in place by other entities. Bureaucratic accountability in particular principles and standards that are used to control the power of the organization. For the Tennessee Waltz case, Bureaucratic accountability started with corruption in the court office through an invoice scam. Through turning every department accounts over a more significant accounting department, it gives an approach through which checks and balances can be applied. This oversight can also be further screened through adding in annual audits by the outside accounting companies that report directly to the local elected governing board. According to Khalil, Saffar & Trabelsi (2015), financial reporting standards prevent corruption when it is combined with much stricter regulations that hold the auditors accountable for misleading through the financial statements materially.
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Reference
Milakovich, M. E., & Gordon, G. J. (2013). Public administration in America . Cengage Learning.
FBI (2008). Tennessee Waltz : The Dance is Over. Accessed 24 th June 2020 from https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2008/may/tennesseewaltz_050208
Khalil, S., Saffar, W., & Trabelsi, S. (2015). Disclosure standards, auditing infrastructure, and bribery mitigation. Journal of business ethics , 132 (2), 379-399.
