Image: Katherine Welles/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has approved nominees to fill two of the seats on the MSPB governing board, following the withdrawal the nominee to fill the third seat just before the committee vote.
The full Senate could vote soon on Dennis Kirk, a former career official with several agencies currently in private practice who is in line to become chairman, and Julia Akins Clark, general counsel at the FLRA during the Obama administration now with the in-house employee appeals office of Congress. The withdrawn nominee was Andrew Maunz, an attorney in the SSA general counsel’s office.
With two members, the board could again start issuing decisions in federal employee appeals for the first time in two years—although if they disagreed on the outcome, a case would have to await confirmation of a third member. The sole member since January 2017, Mark Robbins, has been serving on a temporary extension that expires at the end of this month; he already is serving concurrently as general counsel at OPM, a position he held previously.
The committee also approved: S-196, to require that agency reports to Congress be in an electronic format and S-195, to have the GPO create a central site for posting all those reports that are public; and S-406, to create a civilian personnel rotation program for cybersecurity professionals.
Meanwhile, the House has passed: HR-995, to create a detailed publicly accessible database of settlement agreements that agencies enter into, including the violations that were alleged and the terms of the settlement; HR-1064, to clarify that whistleblower protection applies to employees who make disclosures within their own chain of command, from their immediate supervisor up to the agency head; HR-1065, to require OMB to study current use of social media in security clearance investigations and the potential for its expansion; and HR-1079, to require OMB to issue a policy creating electronic consent forms for use by congressional offices when contacting agencies for information related to inquiries from members of the public that require the individual’s consent to release.
