Last year, I wrote about the Securities and Exchange Commission getting slated by the Government Accountability Office. You can read some of the reports here and here.

Now the Government Accountability Office has come out with a new report saying the SEC bureaucracy is too slow, too tied up in red tape.

Despite the SEC's best efforts, it said, there was still a substantial backlog of cases.

"One regional Enforcement official said that as of March 2007, nearly 300 (about 35 percent) of the office's 840 open investigations were 2 or more years old, were no longer being pursued, and had no pending enforcement actions. Enforcement officials said that the failure to close such investigations promptly could have negative consequences for individuals and companies no longer suspected of having committed securities violations,'' the GAO said. "They attributed the failure to close many investigations to several factors, such as time-consuming administrative requirements for attorneys to prepare detailed investigation closing memorandums that then must be routed to senior division officials for review and approval."

The GAO said that despite the SEC's efforts, it will still struggle to get rid of the backlog, citing "significant limitations that hampered its ability to effectively manage operations and allocate resources."