Connolly, Hice Request President Biden Fill Seats on MSPB
In an April 5, 2021 letter to President Joe Biden, Representative Gerald Connolly (D-VA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, and Representative Jody Hice (R-GA), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, requested that the president nominate qualified board members to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB).
The lawmakers explained in their letter, “We write to urge you to nominate qualified board members to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). Without a quorum, the MSPB is unable to act on claims of whistleblower retaliation and is at risk of essentially having to cease its operations.”
The MSPB is a bipartisan board by statute, with no more than two members from the same political party, but it has lacked a quorum to fulfill its duties since January of 2017.
Since March of 2019, there has not been a single board member on the Board, meaning employees are unable to appeal decisions of MSPB’s approximately 60 administrative judges to the Board. As a result, there is a backlog of more than 3,000 petitions from federal employees requesting review of their cases. Representatives Connolly and Hice concluded, “We respectfully request that you prioritize the nominations of new Board members. Once your nominations are made, we trust that the Senate will work quickly to confirm the qualified candidates to the MSPB and restore the Board to full operations.”
The letter from the lawmakers follows a similar request to the White House in late March from over two dozen organizations within the Federal-Postal Coalition. “Each day the MSPB operates without a quorum, the back pay agencies will need to provide to reinstated employees grows. Some reports estimate agencies will owe at least $60 million in back pay once final decisions resume,” the groups wrote.
