Head of Whistleblower Office Criticized
The Associated Press
Thursday 03 March 2005
Washington - The head of the federal office responsible for
protecting government whistleblowers is the focus of a complaint filed
Thursday by some of his own employees, who say he is undermining laws
that encourage workers to expose wrongdoing.
Scott Bloch, who runs the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, refuses
to enforce laws that protect whistleblowers in the federal workplace,
especially gays, and is retaliating against his own staff, the
employees alleged.
Bloch's office called the allegations a set of "baseless charges"
and said they would be forwarded to the President's Council on
Integrity and Efficiency "in the hope that they will be able to put
them to rest once and for all."
According to the employees' complaint, a new policy instituted by
Bloch resulted in the agency closing more than 600 cases in only a few
months, without referring any of them for investigation of whether the
employees' allegations of government misconduct are true.
Under the policy, the employees allege career staff in the
agency's disclosure unit are not permitted to contact whistleblowers
but are required to close their cases unless their written filings are
sufficient on their face to establish a basis for investigation.
"While publicly congratulating himself for reducing the caseload
.... Mr. Bloch has failed to explain just what happened to all of the
cases he closed," said the complaint filed in Washington.
Agency spokeswoman Cathy Deeds said, "It's absolutely false that
any directive was given that whistleblowers should not be called." She
said that in some circumstances, it was not necessary to call the
whistleblowers because they already provided sufficient information to
process the case.
Early this year, Bloch reassigned a dozen employees from the
agency's headquarters to offices around the country. According to the
complaint, the reassignments were the result of friction between the
employees and Bloch.
Among those reassigned was the office's expert on the Hatch Act,
the law that restricts political activity by federal workers at all
levels of government.
Bloch came under fire last year when he moved to deny gay federal
workers protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation
and removed references to sexual orientation from the agency's Web
site and complaint forms.
The White House affirmed President Bush's support for protecting
gay federal workers from discrimination after some Democratic
lawmakers complained.
In a letter to Bush, the employees' lawyer, Debra S. Katz, wrote:
"Mr. Bloch ignored your express direction that federal agencies
enforce" anti-discrimination laws against gays.
Since the controversy, Bloch has doubled the number of political
appointees at the agency and issued a gag order barring his employees
from talking to the press or Congress about internal agency matters,
the complaint alleged.
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