Federal workers feeling blue over the congressional deadlock

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 12, 2002 | by Martin Edwin Andersen

As Congress left town without passing the president's homeland-security legislation, a new report shows that the morale of 170,000 federal workers slated to be deployed to the proposed security department has plummeted. Focus groups of employees from among the 22 agencies that will be combined in the antiterror bureaucracy say they worry about pay, future duties and reductions in force.

The study was conducted by a bipartisan team headed by national pollsters Peter D. Hart and Bob Teeter.

"Federal workers feel out of the loop as their future is being decided," says Max Stier, president of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, which commissioned the study. "This translates into 170,000 employees spending their precious time focusing on unanswered questions," Stier says, "instead of protecting our homeland."

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune, citing an upsurge in terrorist incidents, including the massacre in Bali, urged Congress to get on with it. Noting that "terrorists don't follow civil-service rules," the newspaper editorialized that the Senate should adopt an administration-friendly compromise offered by Sens. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and Zell Miller (D-Ga.)

In exchange, the Tribune suggested: "Republicans ought to give up their opposition to freedom-of-information requirements and protections to whistle-blowers in the new agency. Throwing a cloak of secrecy over the entire operation would tend to cover misdoings and errors rather than advance domestic security."

MARTIN EDWIN ANDERSEN IS A REPORTER FOR Insight. READERS MAY REACH HIM WITH THEIR TIPS ON GOVERNMENTAL WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE OF POWER AT INSIGHTWATCHERS@AOL.COM.