Posted on 11/17/2008 11:02:15 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Just weeks before leaving office, the Interior Department's top lawyer has shifted half a dozen key deputies -- including two former political appointees who have been involved in controversial environmental decisions -- into senior civil service posts.
The transfer of political appointees into permanent federal positions, called "burrowing" by career officials, creates security for those employees, and at least initially will deprive the incoming Obama administration of the chance to install its preferred appointees in some key jobs.
Similar efforts are taking place at other agencies. Two political hires at the Labor Department have already secured career posts there, and one at the Department of Housing and Urban Development is trying to make the switch.
Between March 1 and Nov. 3, according to the federal Office of Personnel Management, the Bush administration allowed 20 political appointees to become career civil servants. Six political appointees to the Senior Executive Service, the government's most prestigious and highly paid employees, have received approval to take career jobs at the same level. Fourteen other political, or "Schedule C," appointees have also been approved to take career jobs. One candidate was turned down by OPM and two were withdrawn by the submitting agency.
The personnel moves come as Bush administration officials are scrambling to cement in place policy and regulatory initiatives that touch on issues such as federal drinking-water standards, air quality at national parks, mountaintop mining and fisheries limits.
The practice of placing political appointees into permanent civil service posts before an administration ends is not new. In its last 12 months, the Clinton administration approved 47 such moves, including seven at the senior executive level. Federal employees with civil service status receive job protections that make it very difficult for managers to remove them.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
No doubt the Congressional dhimmicrats will open an investigation into this shocking breach of ethics. < /sarc>
Good..but not good enough...
Congress has drug it heals on judicial appointments...now it will be full throttle..
Thank God, Someone’s got a brain
Clinton did the same thing.
good.........
This won’t make me popular, but I’m not in favor of burrowing. If there’s an open position and those appointees qualify, then they should apply and compete. Just burrowing them inflates the FTEE and prevents filling other positions down the foodchain.
The fed is in such a mess as it is with a minority of employees pulling the weight for the majority. Burrowing isn’t going to help.
Actually, I consider it President Bush’s final service to patriotic America.
Anyone installed by O will be subversive in the extreme.
This started in March, is something all Presidents do so it is not "scrambling" but common sense.
What I find most interesting about this article is that here at Free Republic over the past eight years of the Bush Administration there have been multiple times, many multiple times the topic has come up about the boneheadedness of President Bush for not getting rid of the entrenched “holdovers” from the Clinton Administration that have made it so difficult to achieve specific goals over the past eight years.
I’ve read responses about how Congress, even when he had Republican Congress “wouldn’t allow him to remove” those Clinton personnel, or other speculative babble as to why they still were entrenched in the Bush Administration, usually that President Bush, and/or the Republican Congress at the time are/were stupid, or to that effect.
The content within this article is the first time I’ve seen the real answer as to what it was that Clinton did to the Bush Administration by “Burrowing” his appointees into career Civil Service postions, yet reading some of the comments posted here today seems as though all along Posters have had the knowledge of what it was Clinton did.
Wondering why today, and this article after eight years of grieving about the intellectual credibility of our Republican President in the matter we all of a sudden seem to have known about this “burrowing” tactic all along. At least that’s the impression I get from reading this morning’s FR Poster commentaries.
I’ve requested knowledge of how Clinton could have compromised the system many times over the past eight years, but never received a viable answer. I’ve read commentary here at FR of how stupid President Bush is because he didn’t get rid of the Clinton holdovers, yet today reading commentary by Posters it seems President Bush is all of a sudden a pretty smart fellow.
Although I’m Pee’d off at the situation, it is FR that finally via the posting of this article once again came through with the information. Ya can’t beat FR for news and information.
I advise every young adult who asks to go into government. Job security like you find nowhere else.
I don't remember Juliet Eilperin writing any articles about this in 2000 about the Clinton administration, even though she was at the Washington Post...
Oh, that's right - Eilperin is a Democrat, and she wouldn't write a hitpiece on her own party, would she? ;-)
Both parties do it.
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