Weather Service official creates new job, takes it himself for a $43,200 raise

An investigation by the inspector general of the U.S. Commerce Department has revealed alleged shenanigans at the National Weather Service.

According to the report, an official at the agency created a job description and salary for a consulting position just before he retired. The official then reportedly returned to work to do that very job, which gave him a $43,200 raise from his previous post.

P. Donald Jiron, the deputy chief financial officer in question, retired in May 2010 — before being re-hired as a consultant the very next day, The Washington Post reports. But the inspector general eventually agreed with Jiron's lawyer that the agency, not the former CFO, was really to blame. The investigation suggested that the practice is common in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA).

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"This contract may be indicative of a routine and troubling practice at NOAA of hiring former employees as contractors for purposes of carrying out similar duties to those they performed prior to leaving federal service," the investigators wrote in their report. The Post notes that by the time Jiron was fired, 21 months after accepting the consultant position, he had received another $471,875.34 from the government.