Welcome Christopher Cihlar

Good news. Christopher Cihlar will join us as the next Director of the Office of Legislative Oversight. OLO is an independent Legislative Branch office that conducts program evaluations, fiscal analyses, audits, and policy research projects assigned by the Council.

Since January 2008 Mr. Cihlar has served as Manager of CountyStat, the highly regarded program started in 2007 by County Executive Isiah Leggett to monitor and improve the performance of County Government departments. Mr. Cihlar previously served as an evaluator and consultant, providing analytical work for the U.S. Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, the Government Accountability Office, the Points of Light Foundation, and other organizations. He received a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University’s Department of Policy Analysis and Management.

By law the Council appoints the OLO Director to a renewable four-year term. The term of Mr. Cihlar’s current appointment will end in January 2016. He will begin his new job as OLO Director on June 4.

Mr. Cihlar will succeed Karen Orlansky, who plans to attend a two-year graduate program at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University Law School. Ms. Orlansky joined the Council staff in 1981 and became an OLO staff member in 1985. She has served as OLO Director since 1994 and is only the second person to hold that position since OLO was established in 1976.