The U.S. Capitol as seen on March 21, 2024. (Gianna Gronowski/Stars and Stripes)
Everything seems to be celebrated with a day or a week or a month, often for pecuniary purposes. There’s National Yo-Yo Day, Handwashing Awareness Week, and National Picnic Month.
That conglomeration of commemorations, however, should not dilute the importance of the time devoted to honor workers who serve all of us, all the time.
May 5-11 is Public Service Recognition Week, a period when public employees at all governmental levels — federal, state, county, local and tribal — are acknowledged for their work.
But they also face challenges, including threats of undue political interference against the fundamental concept of a nonpartisan civil service.
At the local level, those threats have targeted election workers, public health officials, teachers and librarians.
A select group of federal workers exemplify the government’s indispensable work. They are finalists for the annual Service to America Medals, a.k.a. Sammies, awarded by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. This year there are 25 finalists, some recognized as individuals and some in teams, with a total of 43 individuals out of more than 2 million federal employees. All are eligible for selection as Federal Employee of the Year. The winners will be feted in September at the Kennedy Center.
“These public servants are the best our nation has to offer, and their accomplishments show just how important an expert career federal workforce is to all of us,” said Partnership President and CEO Max Stier. “Federal employees like these are the heart of an effective government.”
Yet, at the same time, “this is probably the most toxic atmosphere for the federal workforce I’ve experienced in my entire life,” said Doreen P. Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) and a Sammies judge. She spent 35 years with the Internal Revenue Service, often a target of criticism.
She did not name a party or a politician but her reference to Republicans and likely to GOP nominee Donald Trump’s plans to gut the federal workforce — was clear.
“Not only do we have campaign promises from politicians to fire as many federal employees as possible,” she added, “we have officeholders and candidates who deploy rhetoric like ‘deep state’ and ‘woke bureaucrats’ in order to stoke mistrust of the very people who do nothing but serve the public good.”
The finalists list is too long for this space to name everyone honored. But a survey of some of the types of achievements highlighted in each of the awards’ five categories shows the federal workforce’s beneficial impact on taxpayers. The quoted descriptions were provided by the Partnership.
- One of the Paul A. Volcker Career Achievement nominees “advocated for and implemented a federal program to promote historically Black colleges and universities as innovation hubs that bridge the digital divide for underserved communities.”
- An Emerging Leaders nominee led Medicare and Medicaid teams that created “online services that help patients dispute unexpected medical bills and hospitals make their prices transparent to the public.”
- Among the Management Excellence nominees is one recognized for organizing “critical research projects that exposed gaps in vehicle safety features, and uncovered shortcomings in the reliability of the U.S. rail and highway systems.”
- A Safety, Security and International Affairs nominee provided services “leading to the reopening of a major interstate highway in Philadelphia less than two weeks after a fiery gasoline tanker crash destroyed a bridge over an exit ramp.”
- One Science, Environment and Technology nominee “created the world’s first tornado-resistant building codes … that will save lives and protect critical facilities like schools, hospitals and emergency centers from extensive property damage.”
While doing these and many more good works, feds also confront proposals and actions that NTEU, which represents workers across the government, opposes because, a union statement says, “of the threat they pose to federal employees.”
That includes Trump’s 2020 executive order imposing a federal employment category, called Schedule F, that would make it easier to fire feds faster for partisan reasons. President Biden quickly ended that when he took office. But if Trump is reelected this year, he promised to reissue the directive and “wield that power very aggressively.” Republican legislation would make Schedule F law.
Republican lawmakers have introduced several other bills in recent months that would also target the federal workforce. These bills would:
- Make all executive branch workers at-will employees, meaning they could be fired without the due process protections used to prevent a workforce politicized by partisans. The bill would abolish the Merit Systems Protection Board, which protects against prohibited personnel practices in the federal government.
- Move federal offices out of the Washington area, disrupting operations and the lives of thousands of employees and their families. The name of this bill, the Drain the Swamp Act, is taken directly from Trump’s rhetoric, which offended feds by essentially labeling them swamp dwellers. It should be noted that only about 15 percent of federal employees live in broadly defined metropolitan Washington, which extends to West Virginia, indicating the vast majority of federal operations already are outside the region.
- Prohibit most executive branch employees from serving more than 12 years. Uniformed and civilian Defense Department employees, and federal law enforcement officers would be exempt. Curiously, this legislation would not apply to presidential appointees, who generally are political party loyalists. Meanwhile, members of Congress would continue to have no term limits.
None of these bills have gained traction in the closely divided House and would probably face defeat in the Democratic Senate.
The toxic atmosphere Greenwald cited is fed by bills like these that rest on negative assumptions about the federal workforce and by proposals like those of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, long an incubator and supporter of GOP policies. Its 2023 “Mandate for Leadership” disparages federal employees, saying they “are often ideologically aligned — not with the majority of the American people — but with one another, posing a profound problem for republican government, a government ‘of, by, and for’ the people.”
Sammies’ finalists present a different, a more accurate view of the federal workforce.
“Federal employees are working on our behalf every day, often in ways we don’t see or realize,” Stier said. “The Sammies bring their remarkable stories to light and open our eyes to the incredible impact of public servants.”
