WP: Widespread Complaints About a Rudderless Government
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 6, 2008; 8:31 PM
When President Obama takes over in January as manager-in-chief of nearly 2 million federal employees, he will need a plan to reinvigorate a frustrated and demoralized workforce, career employees warn.
In numerous agencies, federal civil servants complain that they have been thwarted for months or even years from doing the government jobs they were hired to do. Federal workers have told presidential transition leaders they feel rudderless, their morale impacted by the Bush administration's opposition to industry regulation, steep budget cuts or the departures many months ago of Bush political appointees. Though they fear publicly identifying themselves, numerous federal workers said in interviews that they are down, but also excited about new leadership.
"Many we talk to are weary, but cautiously optimistic that with this change in administrations they will get to do their job again," said Jeff Ruch, of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "In the environmental agencies we deal with, they weren't allowed to do their jobs because the Bush White House operated on a very centralized basis. The rule was, that which the White House doesn't want to hear shall not be said."...
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Regulatory agencies -- including the Departments of Interior and Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission -- have been the hardest hit by morale issues, mainly because of Bush's anti-regulatory posture, workers and union officials said. Hundreds of federally-employed scientists, researchers and agency lawyers have drafted, studied and restudied regulations that went nowhere.
At EPA, a regional staffer who works on wetlands protection said the agency's political appointees have stalled and erected roadblocks on work to clean air, water and soil. Headquarters waited a year to advise staff on how to handle a Supreme Court decision that threw wetlands rules into doubt, then issued vague, "useless" guidance, he said. "There's been an inability for people to do their jobs and do it well, " said the staffer, who asked to remain anonymous. "The administration's purpose has been to do nothing."
At Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), career scientists were told in 2001 by arriving Bush appointees to stop work on nearly completed regulations to reduce exposure to four well-documented workplace poisons...."Even though we can show bodies on the floor from this danger, nothing gets out the door," said the OSHA veteran, who ticked off a list of Ph.D.-carrying colleagues who retired to be more productive elsewhere. Some agencies are also suffering from double-digit percentage cuts in staff and resources, and the strain on federal workers has been noted in several independent reports. The staff of the Small Business Administration, for example, dropped from 2,975 to 2,166 since Bush took office. The volume of federal contracting has nearly doubled during that same period, from $207 billion in 2000 to $400 billion last year, while the number of staff monitoring contracts has declined.
Also, some agencies have gone through much of this year with no leaders in the big window offices. In May, eight months before Bush was to leave the White House, half the administration's top 250 political positions were vacant or filled by temporary appointees....
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"The atmosphere in the agencies, even among career people, is pretty negative," (Frank Buono, a retired National Park Service employee) said. "They have been completely browbeaten."...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/06/AR2008110602572.html?nav%3Dhcmodule&sub=AR
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