Nation: The Battle over Bureaucracy

Can 2.8 million federal employees be made to work harder?

“While there are many highly competent, dedicated civil servants, the percentage of the civil servants who are not earning what the taxpayers are paying them is almost as high as any figure you ever heard by any right-winger you ever hated. There is a very substantial number of people on the civil service rolls who are literally bilking the taxpayer.”

So charged Eileen Shanahan, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, in a speech to the Women’s National Democratic Club last week. Her criticism of the bureaucracy was no harsher than comments that can be heard from many of the 2.8 million federal employees themselves. ”

The bureaucracy has grown by 15% in 20 years, and bigger has not meant better. From all accounts at every level, initiative is stifled, mediocrity is rewarded by raises, and there is an unknown number of living, breathing bureaucrats who get paid handsomely for doing virtually nothing. The whole enterprise is snarled in 21 volumes of ever-expanding regulations, which nobody pretends to understand, much less read. Small wonder that the Civil Service Commission, which supervises federal personnel, has itself become a thriving bureaucracy with 8,600 employees. Over the past two decades, the agency has grown five times faster than total federal employment.

No issue figured more prominently in Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign. He promised to reorganize and reduce Big Government. But other Presidents have made similar pledges, only to end up making the bureaucracy bigger than ever. This week, however, Carter unveils a new pro gram that promises the first comprehensive reform of the civil service since it was established 95 years ago in place of the politically dominated spoils system. The program, says Carter’s reorganization chief, Harrison Wellford, will “put the work ethic back into public service.” Managers will be able to hire, fire and transfer personnel more easily and offer cash incentives for good work. Given Carter’s track record, there is no telling how hard he will push his proposal. It is equally uncertain how it will be received on Capitol Hill, since members of Congress have close ties to the established bureaucracy. But there can be no dispute that reform is long overdue.

For any conscientious administrator who wants to get a job done, carry out a President’s orders or an act of Congress, the bureaucracy is often more of a hindrance than a help. “Managers feel they are so enmeshed in red tape that they cannot manage any more,” says Jule Sugarman, vice chairman of the Civil Service Commission. Aside from directing an employee to the nearest coffeepot, there is little that a supervisor can do without encountering some cumbersome regulation. The 18 General Schedule (GS) grades of the civil service are largely insulated from outside pressure. An employee gets automatic pay increases just by remaining on the job. Additional raises are supposed to be based on merit; if so, the Federal Government is extraordinarily meritorious. In 1977 only 600 people were denied a merit raise out of the million who were eligible. The repeated raises have brought federal employees to high levels, ranging from a stenographer’s $9,600 to an assistant department head’s $47,000 (and they are exempt from Social Security taxes).

If a worker is turned down for a raise, he must be given a less than satisfactory rating for his work, a move that any supervisor contemplates with foreboding. The supervisor is compelled to give the offending employee 90 days’ notice before he issues the bad grade. During this time, the employee is able to build up a substantial defense. He can then make a series of appeals with full-dress hearings that can drag on for months. Understandably, managers prefer to give everybody a passing grade in order to avoid the hassle.

It is even harder, of course, to fire anyone. Consider that out of 19,000 federal employees discharged last year, a mere 200 were dismissed for not doing their work properly. The rest were guilty of some serious infraction, such as not showing up for work, being drunk on the job or striking a superior. Before a manager can fire a worker who does not do his job effectively, he must supply a written explanation to the individual 30 days ahead of time. The employee may appeal the firing up the chain of command. If the decision is upheld, he can demand a hearing before the Federal Employee Appeals Authority. If the ruling still goes against him, he can then appeal to the federal courts, which have proved increasingly sympathetic to employees’ claims of discrimination on grounds of race or sex.

In an effort to fire a single employee, a manager can spend anywhere from 25% to 50% of his working hours for a period ranging from six to 18 months at an estimated cost to the taxpayers of $100,000. To illustrate the process, Reorganizer Wellford has a 21-ft.-long chart in his office illustrating one Environmental Protection Agency official’s 21-month effort to fire a $9,600-a-year stenographer. Various lines snaking through a maze of boxes and triangles denote all the required memos, warnings, suspensions and conferences. The official devoted so much time and effort to the firing that he began getting bad ratings on his own work.

A)out 30% of dismissals for unacceptable work are lost on appeal because of faulty procedure. Recalls an official in the Federal Energy Administration who tried to get rid of an incompetent employee: “It was a steady string of affidavits and appeals and hearings. You’d have thought I was the one they were trying to fire.” After six months, the official gave up in disgust, and the subordinate remained on the job. “The fellow finally died,” says the manager. “I guess you’d say that was the only decision we got.”

If an employee cannot be fired, what about shifting him out of the department? A request for such a transfer must be submitted to the Civil Service Commission, where it often sinks out of sight. To get rid of incompetents, managers steer them to what are called “turkey farms,” offices where nothing much is required and little damage can be done. The bureaucracy is studded with these farms, which a HUD analyst claims can be spotted on sight. “Just walk down the halls,” he says. “You’ll see lots of zombies.”

Many employees openly admit to doing nothing to earn their pay. For a year and a half, a statistician at HUD earning $13,000 a year, and four equally idle coworkers, drank coffee, pondered crossword puzzles and listened to the radio. “Our supervisors were always telling us to look busy,” she says. “But there’s only so much you can pretend when you haven’t got a damn thing to do.”

Another reason for the inertia is the official bias in favor of war veterans, who now hold more than half of all federal jobs, and 65% of the highest paying ones. This preference dates back to 1865, when a grateful President Lincoln pressed for a law that would favor those who “have borne the battle.” Veterans of any war are entitled to a crucial extra five points on the civil service exam. If disabled vets pass the test, they automatically go to the top of the hiring list no matter how many others have scored higher.

The most promising people are often mangled by the Government machinery. Harold Hodgkinson, director of HEW’S National Institute of Education during the Ford Administration, wanted to promote a talented secretary but was unable to get her reclassified for a better job. The Civil Service Commission said that if she were reclassified, every other secretary in the agency would have to be reclassified. “There is almost no ability to promote able people from secretarial and clerical positions into leadership posts,” he says. “Once people are on a track, you can’t get them switched to another.”

Even if a job opens up, it takes an unconscionably long time to fill it because of all the initials required at the bottom of countless memos. The average time that elapses between requesting that a job be filled and actually getting the employee is 58.6 working days. The more important the position, the longer the delay: three months for low-level managers, six months for intermediate, almost a year at the top level. By the time an administrator has his own team in place, he may be on the way out himself. Seasoned bureaucrats know how to outwait and outfox a politically appointed boss, no matter how zealous or resolute.

Despite all the campaign oratory about Big Government, the Carter people were shocked when they confronted the real thing. The Administration found that it could appoint only some 2,200 persons—less than 10% of the whole force. Complains one top official: “There is tremendous resistance from the existing team, from the support system, from the people you need to make your operation run. They consider us the enemy.”

Carter’s reform program draws on past efforts. “There’s not a revolutionary idea in the package,” says Alan Campbell, chairman of the Civil Service Commission. It embodies, in fact, basic management techniques of private business, however radical they may appear to public employees. “We looked at all the possible incentives,” says Wellford, “and came back to dollars. We found that would be more effective than the depth of pile rugs or silver water pitchers or corner offices for providing incentives to work harder.”

Carter’s plan would establish an elite corps of some 9,000 senior officers in the Federal Government. These supervisors, who currently earn between $42,500 and $50,000 a year, would receive annual bonuses for exceptional performance instead of automatic increases. Bonuses could amount to as much as 20% of their salaries, bringing them to a maximum of $54,000 a year. The senior officers, however, would have to consent to be transferred to any agency where they are needed. They could also be dropped out of this elite status, although they could then return to regular civil service status.

Some 70,000 middle managers, making from $26,000 to $36,000 a year, would also be switched from automatic-to merit-pay increases. Under the new system, they could receive annual increases of up to 12%, or no raise at all, depending on how well they performed.

The whole firing process would be contained within 120 days. Thirty days would be allowed for the warning period, 60 days for the employee to improve his performance and 30 more for him to be separated or demoted. The multiple appeals now allowed would be reduced to only one. To guard against a return to what one official calls the ” Attila the Hun school of management,” no employees could be shifted or sacked for the first 120 days of a new Administration. This would prevent a new political appointee from making a clean sweep of the opposite party.

Carter’s program would scale down the preference for veterans. This would be eliminated entirely for career officers of the rank of colonel (or captain in the

Navy) or above. Officers below these ranks would be entitled to the preference for three years after leaving the service, instead of an indefinite period. Enlisted men could use the preference for ten years.

The Civil Service Commission would be abolished and replaced by two bodies: the Office of Personnel Management, which would set central federal policy, and the Merit Protection Board, which would assume the quasi-judicial functions, such as review of firings and other protests within the federal civil service. A special counsel would be created to protect the “whistle blowers” who dare to raise their voices against abuses in the system.

Finally, the plan would encourage decentralization by permitting more decision making at the regional or agency level. Wayne Granquist, an official in the Office of Management and Budget who helped devise the plan, likes to cite the example of the forest ranger who is sent into the woods of Oregon for a wildlife census. Since he is in what is called a remote area, he is entitled to an extra $12 a week. But this modest increase in pay must be approved all the way up the line from district to regional to national headquarters of the U.S. Forest Service. Then the request must be signed by the three civil service commissioners before the ranger can pocket his $12. Quips Gran quist: “It’s like fine tuning a TV with a 3,000-mile-long screwdriver.”

The Carter Administration knows that it cannot get its plan through Congress without a bruising fight. It should not have much trouble replacing the Civil Service Commission, which can be accomplished by the President as long as the move is not vetoed by Congress within 60 days. But it will run into heavy flak from the Hill on the questions of veterans’ preference and merit pay, which require legislation. Every major veterans’ group in the nation can be counted on to mobilize against the change. The Government employees’ unions will put up sim ilar resistance to the merit-pay proposal. As a tradeoff, they will demand a collective bargaining clause, which could lead to the same kind of excessive demands made by municipal unions.

Carter’s-plan does have a growing body of support. Ready to defend it are the Chamber of Commerce, Common Cause and Ralph Nader’s consumer constituency. The plan will surely be popular with the public, which has grown resentful of a bureaucracy that produces less while earning more money for itself. Inertia was perhaps tolerable when federal pay was not competitive with the private sector, but that is no longer the case. Secretaries, stenographers, keypunch operators and other clerical employees for the Government often earn more than similar workers in private industry. Average hourly wages for U.S. postal employees are one-third higher than the average for insurance and telephone companies and electric utilities.

Sizable public backing gives the Carter program a fighting chance to change a system that has defied significant alteration since it was first set up. Admits an employee in the Government Printing Office: “We’ve got to understand that our first responsibility is to serve the people and not the Government, which pays us each month. Somewhere in all of this, the American people have gotten lost.”