WASHINGTON - A top government watchdog group criticized Rep. Jerry Lewis on Friday for dismissing dozens of auditors from the House Appropriations Committee.

Lewis, the Redlands Republican who chairs the federal spending panel, failed to renew the contracts of 60 investigators who worked as independent contractors examining waste, fraud and abuse related to Iraq war spending, Hurricane Katrina and other programs.

The investigative team conducts reports only for members of the spending panel, at their request, and nearly all of their findings are kept secret.

Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, said he was troubled by the dismissal of the investigators.

"It says a lot about the transparency of the Appropriations Committee," Schatz said. "So what is Congress doing and what is the appropriations committee doing to determine the amount of waste (related to) Katrina and other spending?"

But committee spokesman John Schofield said Lewis chose not to renew the investigators' contracts because the committee felt it was not getting its money's worth.

"There was concern the work we were getting was poor, but it was expensive," he said. "You could have gotten the same information from reading the newspapers."

The committee spent more than $2 million annually on salaries for the investigators, according to House employment records. The auditors' yearlong contracts expired Oct. 17.

The investigators' dismissals were first reported Thursday by the Congressional Quarterly, but Schofield said many could ultimately be rehired.

"We just took some time to think about it," he said.

Several investigators reached at home Friday declined to comment and referred questions to the committee. One retired investigator, Michael Glynn, said the auditors were charged with examining any federally funded program that lawmakers asked them to.

"We gave them an objective look at what the program was doing. They could do what they wanted with (the results)," Glynn said.

Schofield said he found the outcry over the contracts ironic.

"We're trying to do oversight of our own oversight program," he said.

lisa.friedman@langnews.com

(202) 662-8731

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