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By: FEDweek StaffThe Senate has confirmed employment lawyer Cathy Harris to become chair of the MSPB board, giving Democrats a 2-1 majority on the key board hearing appeals of disciplinary actions against federal employees.
Harris, of the Kator, Parks, Weiser & Harris firm in Washington, D.C., formerly was an assistant district attorney in the New York County district attorney’s office and has been an adjunct professor at the George Washington University law school.
She was confirmed on a party-line vote with six senators not voting, almost exactly a year after she was nominated. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee also had split on the nomination along party lines but Senate leaders used special procedures applying in those situations to call the vote on the floor.
The MSPB had lacked a quorum to issue decisions for five years until March when two nominees were confirmed. Those two have begun issuing decisions in cases on which they agree, many of them aimed at setting precedents on issues common to multiple cases among the 3,600-plus case backlog that had built up of appeals from hearing officer decisions.
Those rulings have touched on topics including whistleblower protections, disciplinary procedures for employees on charges of poor performance, special provisions for VA employees under a 2017 law, and more.
Her confirmation follows the confirmation of a Democrat to replace a Republican and create a Democratic majority on another key oversight agency, the FLRA. Still pending before the Senate are the nominations of FLRA chairman Ernest DuBester for another term, and for Kurt Rumsfeld, chief counsel to DuBester, for FLRA general counsel, a position that decides which complaints (the large majority of which are filed by unions against management) are brought to the board for decisions. That position currently is being filled on an acting basis after being vacant for most of the Trump administration, resulting in a backlog there, as well.
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