Houston Keene, Lyceum
Imagine that a longtime employee—say, a self-regarding TV journalist unhappy with his network’s new direction—berates and insults his new boss in a staff meeting. That employee can and should get fired for insubordination. A TV network is beholden to its viewers, its advertisers and, most of all, its shareholders. It has a responsibility to remove obstacles, including underperforming or insubordinate employees, to deliver value to each of those groups as best it can. That’s the reality for three-quarters of U.S. workers—even our most pompous newsmen.
That is not the case for the government. Our local, state and federal governments have stakeholders: the taxpayers who fund them and the voters who decide their direction. After elections emerge two kinds of federal workers. There are the political appointees, chosen by the president and confirmed by the Senate. These individuals serve at the president’s pleasure and only during his term of office. Then there are the permanent and supposedly nonpolitical career employees. Until recently, civil service protections made firing career federal workers nearly impossible and extremely time-consuming, with every decision subject to red tape and appeals. Thankfully, that story is changing for some government employees.
In early June, President Trump issued an executive order turning about 8,000 bureaucrats in “senior policy-influencing positions” into at-will employees who can be more readily removed.