Former PC Director Mark Gearan joins former presidential appointees who recommend appointment reforms
Read and comment on this story from the Scripps Howard News Service that warns about potential problems organizing the new Homeland Security Department. A recent Government Operations Agency report warned that reorganizing and regrouping thousands of workers from assorted departments was likely to be disruptive over a long term and could present security problems.
Former Peace Corps Director Mark Gearan joined 221 former presidential appointees who signed a letter recommending such reforms as twice monthly status reports on nominations, increased privacy protection on personal matters, assurance of a Senate vote within 45 days and removal of the burden of post-employment conflict-of-interest regulations. Gearan said, "No matter who is president, there are extraordinary obstacles" and complained that having undergone one FBI check for a high-level job didn't help if you were appointed to another.
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Bush appointees face tough road ahead
By MURIEL DOBBIN
McClatchy Newspapers
November 24, 2002
WASHINGTON - Spawned by the war on terrorism, the new Department of Homeland Security is not only the biggest government reorganization in half a century, but it's potentially a huge headache for a federal appointments system that has operated at a glacial pace for decades.
What worries experts is that not even the urgency imposed by fear of terrorist attacks will expedite making a mammoth operation involving more than 170,000 employees drawn from 22 federal agencies fully operative, unless the staffing process is streamlined.
Paul Light, senior adviser to the Presidential Appointee Initiative, who has been fighting for three years to remove the hurdles of red tape and bureaucracy that litter the path of appointees at nearly all federal levels, predicted that increased security measures would further slow the progress of the new agency.
Light emphasized that he was faulting the process, not the White House, where personnel officials refused to comment on the need for a reformed appointment process. The Bush administration now has about 94 percent of its appointees in place. What Light advocated was cutting back on lengthy FBI investigations of even low-level employees, and a reassessment of the hardship caused by uncompensated relocation and salary cuts for nominees.
The Department of Homeland Security will call for the nomination and Senate confirmation of a secretary, two deputy secretaries, five undersecretaries, a general counsel and as many as twelve assistant secretaries. Light said the top-level positions were likely to get fast approval.
"The lower you go on the scale, the longer it takes, and that creates a problem for the efficiency of the infrastructure," he said.
Noting that the new agency would be second in size only to the Department of Defense, Light recalled that in the past, smaller agencies had taken years to gel. He offered as an example NASA. The National Aeronautical and Space Administration, which was founded in 1958, had not "found its feet" until three years later, when President Kennedy proclaimed its historic mission to put a man on the moon.
A recent Government Operations Agency report warned that reorganizing and regrouping thousands of workers from assorted departments was likely to be disruptive over a long term and could present security problems. Tentative plans are to locate the offices of the new secretary and his staff in Washington, with about 18,000 employees also established in the city. But the White House still has to sign off on a master plan for the massive consolidation of agencies.
Congressional approval of the new agency coincided last week with a second appeal by more than 200 former presidential appointees for reform of an appointment system that currently takes about eight months for confirmation.
Former presidential appointees argued that some of the bureaucratic delay was unnecessary and discouraging. High on their list of complaints were interminably detailed FBI field checks and partisan blocks imposed in the Senate.
They were among the 221 former presidential appointees who signed a letter recommending such reforms as twice monthly status reports on nominations, increased privacy protection on personal matters, assurance of a Senate vote within 45 days and removal of the burden of post-employment conflict-of-interest regulations.
Mark Gearan, a former deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and ex-director of the Peace Corps, said, "No matter who is president, there are extraordinary obstacles."
He complained that having undergone one FBI check for a high-level job didn't help if you were appointed to another.
Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalizaitn Service in the Clinton administration, reported no significant "bumps in the road" during the seven months it took to confirm her appointment.
"My point is that it was still too long," said Meissner, who warned that the "terror factor" of presidential appointment meant a reduced pool of qualified candidates willing to tolerate such personal and financial inconvenience.
There was agreement among them that the FBI investigations of lower ranking appointees should be cut back according to their likely security clearance, and that White House questionnaires should be revised.
"A lot of this is driven by a powerful fear of a bad appointee, yet it seems to date back to the Cold War," Light said. "How do you respond to a form that asks questions such as 'Is there anyone you know who would 'covertly or overtly' oppose you?"
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