The Office of Special Counsel and HUD have reached an agreement on an unusual case that might best be described as one of reverse burrowing in, involving the refusal to convert an individual from a politically appointed position to a career position because of the individual’s appointive status.
In most cases, the term burrowing in is used to describe the conversion of appointees into career positions, in particular in the waning months of a Presidential administration. Last year, as it had in past transitions, OPM imposed a series of oversight steps on such conversions, although reiterating that there is nothing preventing a political appointee from getting a competitive service position if he or she is deemed best qualified.
In the HUD case, the department refused to hire into the competitive service a Schedule C political appointee, but OSC determined, after the individual filed a complaint, that the individual was the best qualified candidate based on merit factors and that the department’s refusal to hire violated the prohibition on using nonmerit factors in filling competitive service positions. The settlement calls on HUD to take all reasonable steps to place the applicant in the position he would have been in if the prohibited personnel practice had not occurred.