Wide Impact, but Many Questions

The bill—which the committee could start moving soon—is the most wide-ranging of the many proposals raised in reaction to the VA patient scheduling and care scandal, which became public this time last year. Something of the sort was widely predicted after Congress passed the changes last year affecting only the SES at VA with overwhelming bipartisan support, since the issues raised in the scandal were not confined to the senior executive levels. Should the latest proposal be enacted into law as well, employee organizations expect there would be calls to revamp federal employee appeal rights government-wide, since enactment would create a two-tier system, one applying to the roughly 300,000 VA employees and the other to the roughly 1.8 million other federal employees (outside the independent USPS). Many of the concerns raised regarding the earlier law limited to the VA’s SES remain unresolved, including whether such a shortened appeal process gives employees enough time to prepare and present a defense, whether the process will make employees more vulnerable to favoritism, discrimination and political decisions, and whether the lack of an appeal right beyond the hearing officer level is constitutional.