By William Wiley, January 17, 2018
As most of us in this business know, the US Merit Systems Protection Board, our Supreme Court in the civil service, effectively has been shut down for over a year. There are three positions on the Board, we need at least two members to vote on a case for a decision to be issued, and since January 6, 2017, we have had only one Board member (due to the early resignation of the previous chairman).
There are two steps to an appeal to MSPB. After the agency takes an action – say, fires someone – the employee files an appeal with an MSPB judge. That judge conducts a hearing and issues a decision either upholding the removal, or setting it aside. That’s the first step.
The second step is that either the agency or the employee can appeal the judge’s decision to the three political appointees who sit as the Board. The members can either affirm the judge’s decision or change it any way they want. What comes out of all of this is that some removals are upheld and in others, the employee gets his job back with back pay.
Every work day of the year, three or four “petitions for review” are filed with MSPB HQ. Those PFRs are filed by either the agency or the employee; occasionally by both, arguing that the judge made a mistake. The effect of this lack of a quorum to review a judge’s decision is that PFRs go in, but no decisions on the PFRs come out. If you’ve ever had a backed-up drain pipe in your home, you have an appreciation for what this is like.
Talking about this mess in the abstract misses the point as to the magnitude of the harm caused by all of this. Utilizing the power of the Freedom of Information Act, we here at FELTG have obtained a profile of all those cases stuck in the pipe at MSPB since January 6, 2017. These are real people with real problems. These are agencies trying to maintain an effective workforce who might be on the hook for ever-increasing back pay and attorneys fees until these appeals are resolved. Keep that in mind as you think about the following select subsets of PFRs now pending for vote at MSPB:
Unacceptable Performers: Of the approximately 750 cases pending a vote by the members as of today, 25 are appeals of the decisions of judges in Chapter 43 unacceptable performance removals. In this time of increased focus on performance accountability, the individuals in these cases deserve an answer, and we practitioners could use all the case law guidance we can get as to how to implement a performance-based removal.
General Misconduct: Legally, these are called appealable “adverse actions.” These cases are almost always removals and involve bad behavior such as sexual harassment, falsification of government documents, theft, workplace violence, and just plain not coming to work. Many times, they involve claims by employees of mistreatment based on a disability or race. There are 345 former-employees awaiting a Board decision in these cases. Some appellants no doubt will be entitled to reinstatement with back pay, whereas others will remain fired, thereby allowing the agency to back-fill their positions. Add to these 20 former probationers who are appealing their removals, and you have about 365 removals that deserve to be decided (one for each day of 2017, if my math is correct).
Veterans: Under two different laws, vets have a special right not to be mistreated because they served on active duty. Because of a lack of a quorum, approximately 80 veterans are awaiting a decision as to whether they have been reprised against because of their service to our country.
Whistleblowers: Woo-whee; Congress does love those who disclose waste, fraud, and abuse in the executive branch. There’s even a special legal channel Congress has created for MSPB appeals of individuals who believe they have been reprised against because of their whistleblowing. It’s called an Individual Right of Action. Even individuals who simply help someone blow the whistle are allowed to use this specialized process. According to the latest information we can get, approximately 140 of the 750 jammed-up appeals at Board HQ are IRAs. You might think that Congress would be upset that these folks are not getting a final resolution to their claims of mistreatment. Of course, you might also think that Congress would look for common ground and collegial decision-making, but you would be wrong about that, as well.
ALJs: And finally, we see that four of the PFRs currently pending for a vote are proposed disciplines of that unique band of federal employees: Administrative Law Judges. Unlike regular civil servants who cannot appeal until their employing agency fires them (or takes some other appealable action), agencies who employ ALJs have no authority to discipline their ALJ employees. They can only propose to MSPB that the ALJ be disciplined, and the Board decides whether a removal or suspension will occur. Unlike the other appeals, there’s no accumulating back pay here. HOWEVER, the employing agency has already decided through its own internal processing that these four very important individuals are bad federal employees, but they can’t do anything about it until the Board finally acts. Somewhere these four individuals are sitting around drawing a federal salary every two weeks even though their employer thinks they should not.
This number of 750 represents the number of PFRs that have been reviewed by the MSPB career staff and are literally sitting in the front office of MSPB, on pause until just one more Board member is available to sign his or her name to the vote sheet, thereby causing a final Board decision to be issued. If a miracle were to happen and a super-human individual were to be confirmed as a Board member today, and that person miraculously could vote on 750 appeals in 24 hours, then 750 final decisions could be issued the next 24 hours and we’d be back to normal.
But wait; there’s more! Separately from the 750 PFRs waiting for a vote before the Board’s members, there’s another batch of pending PFRs currently being worked on by the HQ Board’s career attorney staff; PFRs that could be voted on today if the staff were to present them to the members for vote. When you add that group in, the total number of PFRs pending at MSPB headquarters as of today, extrapolating from our recently-responded-to FOIA request is … (ready the drum roll) … 1,400! That’s a full year’s worth of cases!
Hopefully as you read through this list, you used your imagination to picture members of each group. These are real people with significant legal rights who were hired to do real work for the government. It’s unfair to them and it’s unfair to us citizens, who appreciate an effective government, that these appeals are not being decided. Hopefully, the White House will soon see the righteousness in nominating a new member to the Board, someone who can hit the ground running, deciding along with the current Acting-Chairman whether the judges who heard these appeals initially made the right or the wrong decision.
And White House, if you’re reading this here article, please immediately nominate ONE not TWO new members. ‘Cause if you name two, it’s going to take twice as long to get concurrence with Chairman Robbin’s existing votes. Nominate one new member now, clear the backlog, then name a second (and then a third to replace Mr. Robbins once his term expires at the end of next month). [email protected]
