The rules provide for a 30-day comment period and state that on finalization—likely in a short time—afterward, another executive order is to be issued to put the system in place. Image: iStock.com/@places-4-you
The Trump administration has taken the next steps toward the launch of a “Schedule Policy/Career” excepted service category as successor to the short-lived and largely unimplemented ‘Schedule F’ of its first term.
Proposed rules for publication in the April 23 Federal Register would erase rules the Biden administration issued last year against converting positions—whether occupied or vacant—involved with policy matters from the competitive service to the excepted service. Biden in early 2021 had revoked Trump’s late-2020 order to do so, an order that Trump in turn revoked early this year with an order to create the somewhat revised Schedule Policy/Career.
The rules provide for a 30-day comment period and state that on finalization—likely in a short time—afterward, another executive order is to be issued to put the system in place.
As with Schedule F, those who would be designated as Schedule Policy/Career would become at-will employees without the standard competitive service rights to challenge disciplinary actions up through firing on grounds of either performance or conduct; union representation and grievance rights, where applicable also would be revoked.
Also as with Schedule F, agencies initially are to propose for inclusion positions of a “confidential,” “policy-determining,” “policy-making,” or “policy advocating” nature. The proposed rules however reflect OPM guidance that shortly followed January’s order that gave examples of a wide range of applicable duties, as well as those who supervise performance of those duties.
The notice repeats the projections of the first Trump administration that about 50,000 positions would be affected, of which it estimates that 5,000 are currently vacant. “The President may move a greater or smaller number of positions, but OPM believes this is a reasonable preliminary estimate,” it says.
However, federal employee organizations and outside experts on the government have said the figure could be far higher, given how wide a net was cast by the few agencies that took substantial steps to carry out Schedule F before it was revoked—and given the January guidance from OPM, which is now incorporated into the proposed rules.
In contrast to Schedule F, though, the final designation would be in the hand of the President, not OPM, and competitive service-type hiring procedures would continue to apply. Those two changes are widely seen as designed to counter legal challenges, several of which were filed soon after the latest order in January.
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