It will be hard for the next administration to root out Trump political appointees that have moved into civil service jobs.
Donald Trump spent four years railing against a “deep state” of career federal workers he claimed was undermining his administration from the inside.
When Joe Biden takes office this week, he may actually have one.
A higher-than-usual number of Trump administration political appointees — some with highly partisan backgrounds — are currently “burrowing” into career positions throughout the federal government, moving from appointed positions into powerful career civil service roles, which come with job protections that will make it difficult for Biden to fire them.
While this happens to some degree in every presidential transition, and some political appointees make for perfectly capable public servants, Biden aides, lawmakers, labor groups and watchdog organizations are sounding the alarm — warning that in addition to standard burrowing, the Trump administration is leaning on a recent executive order to rush through dozens if not hundreds of these so-called “conversions.” The fear is that, once entrenched in these posts, the Trump bureaucrats could work from the inside to stymie Biden’s agenda, much of which depends on agency action.
The October executive order — which Biden is expected to swiftly rescind — has allowed federal agencies to help political appointees circumvent the usual merit-based application process for career civil service jobs, while moving career policymakers into a new job category with far fewer legal protections.
Thanks to weak transparency laws, the full impact of both changes may not be known for months.
The Office of Personnel Management is required to report any conversion of political appointees into career positions to Congress on a quarterly basis — meaning lawmakers only know now what has happened through September of last year. But there are also gaps in terms of which agencies must be included in the reports, which are not required to be made public. The disclosures are also dependent on agencies identifying the employees shifting into career slots and reporting them to OPM.
“There’s real questions about whether OPM has served as a true guardian to stop bad conversions from happening,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit focused on improving the way government works.
The president-elect and his team are aware of the issue and have been considering ways to address it, several officials involved with or close to the transition told POLITICO. Transition officials have discussed whether and how Biden could fire burrowed employees and if they should ask inspectors general to get involved, one person said.
They have also asked their agency review teams to look out for burrowing at the departments they are overseeing, and the teams have provided transition leaders with regular updates on any appointees being converted to civil servant positions or other cases of political hiring.
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A higher-than-usual number of Trump administration political appointees are moving from appointed positions into powerful career civil service roles, which come with job protections that will make it difficult for Joe Biden to fire them https://t.co/pT8WxplCmO
— POLITICO (@politico) January 19, 2021
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