Whatever else the resignations of officials working for the Environmental Protection Agency portend, I believe that they support my view that we are in desperate need of civil service reform. The editors of the Wall Street Journal note:
The media and federal unions are making a cause celebre out of federal scientists who have resigned and then denounced Trump Administration policies on the way out. We’re all for shrinking the government workforce, but the political melodrama could use a few leavening facts.
The latest splash is from Elizabeth Southerland, until recently the director of science and technology in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water. Ms. Southerland ended a 30-year EPA career last week with an internal memo decrying Donald Trump’s “draconian†budget cuts, and his “industry deregulation.†She said her “civic duty†required that she warn that “our children and grandchildren†face “increased public health and safety risks and a degraded environment.â€
This follows the much-publicized April departure of Michael Cox, who quit the EPA in Washington state after 25 years, complaining in a letter to Administrator Scott Pruitt about “indefensible budget cuts†and efforts to “dismantle EPA and its staff as quickly as possible.â€
Both EPA employees are of retirement age, and they are right to bow out if they can’t in good faith work for Mr. Pruitt. Their letters nonetheless reveal an entrenched and liberal federal bureaucracy. Though career civil servants who are supposed to serve political appointees of any party, they have clearly become progressive ideological partisans.
The very least we should do is expand the Hatch Act’s scope, including more civil servants under its strictures, and imposing broader penalties for its violation including civil and, in the most egregious cases, criminal penalties.
“Though career civil servants who are supposed to serve political appointees of any party, they have clearly become progressive ideological partisans.”
Well blow me over…..
I’ve long been a strong advocate of civil service reform, but I don’t support expanding the Hatch Act for a variety of reasons. I actually don’t have an issue with people who quit because they disagree with an administration’s policies – if one can’t reconcile the job requirements with one’s personal values then the appropriate thing to do is quit.
I agree that’s the appropriate thing. The present course seems to be to mount an insurgency while holding your civil service job.
(1) You’ve described political statements/actions by people who have resigned their jobs. The Hatch Act doesn’t apply to them.
(2) There’s an issue about what “political” behavior is. The people who created the Civil Service system had the intent of getting government employees out of campaigning for political office holders. Nobody in the 1880’s would have concerned themselves with whether speeches and scientific papers about human-caused global warming were political or whether government employees could discuss where mining wastes could be dispersed or the purity of alcoholic beverages or the ideal mixture of immigrants, etc. These were hardly conceivable issues when our civil service was set up.
Precisely why I think the Hatch Act needs to be expanded.
Granting that I’m a federal employee, I’m not sure I see a problem in this instance. I don’t like that some agencies tend to be overwhelmingly of one party/ideological bent but it’s likely inevitable given their missions. The Border Patrol likely doesn’t attract a lot of hippies nor the EPA many Birchers. I’m for upping the penalties for leaking, for example. But I don’t see how we’d demand that the EPA change its views on climate science based on who’s in the Oval Office.
It is TAKEN FOR GRANTED that any judge appointed by a Republican president will be a member of, or at least strongly endorsed, by the Federalist Society — which is noted for being a conservative group.
Why should judges — pretty clearly government employees — have the absolute right to indulge their political philosophy in the course of performing their official duties, while file clerks and scientists in government are prohibited from expressing their views?