A Senate committee has again voted to approve a nominee for the FLRA’s governing board and one for the MSPB’s, but final confirmation of either remains uncertain.
The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held the votes because it had approved the nominees—federal employment lawyer and former union official Cathy Harris to chair the MSPB and Susan Tsui Grundmann, who chaired that agency during the Obama administration, for an FLRA seat—last year only on evenly split party-line votes. Under Senate rules, in that situation a nomination needs further action to carry from one year to the next.
The new votes resulted in the same outcome, though. Further, the committee set aside at least temporarily two other nominations for the FLRA that had been approved in the same way last year—for another term for chairman Ernest DuBester, and for Kurt Rumsfeld, currently chief counsel to DuBester, to become general counsel.
The committee last year had approved two other nominees for the MSPB on voice votes. If confirmed they would restore the quorum the board has lacked for five years and allow it to again issue decisions on employees’ appeals. However, the split over the Harris nomination may cause yet another delay since Senate Republicans have insisted on filling all the seats at once.
While the FLRA board currently is full, it continues to have the 2-1 Republican majority that resulted in a number of pro-management decisions in recent years—two of which a federal appeals court recently overturned. Confirmation of Grundmann would reverse the party control since she would replace a Republican who has served as a hold-over after his term expired. Federal unions recently started a campaign to prod Senate Democratic leaders to call the FLRA nominees to a final vote.
However, the term of the other Republican is due to expire in July and the ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, has indicated he will work to delay confirmation of the current nominees until a nominee for that seat can be voted on at the same time.
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