WASHINGTON – So whatever happened to Jo Ann Rooney?
"Wow, I haven't heard that name in quite awhile," one Pentagon-based US Navy officer said when asked a few weeks ago about her status. "No one talks about her."
And yet Rooney's nomination to become undersecretary of the Navy, the second-highest office in the Navy Department, remains in force.
In fact, it's been more than a year now — Sept. 11, 2013 — since the White House nominated the two-time small college president and former tax attorney to succeed Bob Work in what, during Work's nearly four years in office, can be one of the most powerful and influential jobs in the Navy.
Rooney's Senate confirmation hearing came quickly, on Oct. 10, but she stumbled badly on questions from senators John McCain, R-Ariz., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. Gillibrand took Rooney to task over chain-of-command and oversight questions about sexual harassment in the military, and sought to block her nomination.
The White House renominated Rooney on Jan. 6, a procedure required with each new year for all unconfirmed nominees. Gillibrand dropped the hold she had put on Rooney when not enough "no" votes could be garnered and, along with three other nominations, Rooney's was approved by the Armed Services Committee on Jan. 9 and sent to the full Senate for a vote.
And there it has languished. All the other nominees in the Jan. 9 group have been approved by the full Senate and taken office, but the Rooney nomination has never come to the floor for a vote. Numerous Senate sources said privately it is highly unlikely a vote on Rooney will happen this year.
"It's not going to come to a vote," one Hill source flatly declared.
Meanwhile, Rooney's name remains officially in nomination for the office.
Work resigned from the Navy in March 2013 to head up a Washington think tank, and has since returned to the Defense Department as the deputy defense secretary, the second-ranking position in the Pentagon.
Since Work's departure, the Navy's No. 2 job has been performed in an acting capacity by two officials, first by Robert Martinage, a Navy deputy undersecretary, who carried out the duties until he was forced to resign in January. Since then Thomas Hicks, who also continues in his permanent positions of deputy undersecretary of the Navy and the service's deputy chief management officer, has carried out the task.
No one in the department who was contacted for this story seems to be holding their breath waiting for Rooney to come in.
"While we'd love to have an appointed under, the senior leaders in the secretariat have done a great job executing our transformation plan," Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in an Oct. 3 statement. "I could not be prouder that the Navy and Marine Corps team has continued to exceed the objectives I've set and accomplished their missions."
As the nomination is made by the president, the issue is out of the Navy Department's hands.
Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House and the National Security Council, declined to comment on the situation. "On Ms. Rooney's nomination, we have nothing to announce," she wrote in a Sept. 17 email.
Numerous attempts to contact Rooney have proved fruitless, and it's not even clear where she is. Internet searches show she is a director of The Bostonian Group, an insurance agency, and is a managing director of the Huron Consulting Group in Chicago.
Navy officials contacted for this story were unaware of her whereabouts or her activities.
Rooney, 54, has limited Washington experience. A tax attorney in the Boston area early in her career, she held senior positions in The Lyons Companies legal firm before becoming president in 2002 of Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky, a private school with an enrollment of about 2,000 students established by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth.
According to her official biography, she was president from July 2010 until December 2010 of Mount Ida College, a small, private college in Newton, Massachusetts, just outside Boston, with a student body of about 1,300.
Rooney's military and government experience began when she came to Washington in June 2011 to become principal deputy defense undersecretary for personnel and readiness. In her time at the Pentagon, Rooney held that job in an acting capacity for almost seven and a half months, from November 2011 to June 8, 2012. She announced her resignation from the Defense Department on July 26, 2012, and left Sept. 4, 2012.
Rooney's qualifications stood in stark contrast to Work, a retired Marine officer and analyst who ranks as one of the most influential Navy undersecretaries. Rooney appeared unprepared on numerous issues during her October 2013 confirmation hearing, stumbling on questions about financial reporting in addition to the sexual harassment issue.
"I will not be supporting your nomination," McCain told her when Rooney was unable to answer a question about the Navy's ability to perform a financial audit.
"That was a very important question," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and chairman of the committee, chimed in. "You didn't know the answer here as to whether it's on schedule."
"That's another area where patience is wearing thin," added Sen. Angus King, I-Maine.
While the nomination is effectively pigeon-holed, neither Rooney nor the White House seem willing to withdraw her name. It's expected to quietly expire when 2014 comes to a close. ■
Email: ccavas@defensenews.com.
