March 17, 2008
A summary of daily news relevant to the federal workforce produced by the Partnership
for Public Service.
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The Federal Government's Most Wanted List
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By Stephen Joel Trachtenberg
We all know about the baby boomers. They are about to reach retirement age, if they haven't already, and leave us with an inadequate number of
professionals and trained personnel as we move further into the 21st century. Thus, I was interested the other day to compare two documents that came
across my desk.
One was a report from the Partnership for Public Service, an organization located here in Washington, pointing out that the war for talent was
hitting the federal government particularly hard as more than one-third of the full-time permanent federal work force prepares to depart in the next
half decade.
The Partnership for Public Service has hooked up with IBM to reach out to some of the non-public service retiring baby boomers and induce them to
come into the government for what are called "encore careers," with the promise of interesting and challenging work. A start was being made to
recruit IBM personnel and get them to consider key federal government positions. The report cited 14,000 "mission-critical jobs" at the US Department
of Treasury alone that will come available in only the next two years. Almost 8,000 IRS agents and tax examiners are being sought and there is a long
list of others - procurement, information technology and accounting personnel are also "most wanted."
In addition to the Partnership for Public Service, IBM, and the AARP, an organization called Civic Ventures plans to urge other corporate leaders
to participate. The president of the Partnership, Dr. Max Stier, says that FedExperience Experience to Government is a triple winner, pointing out
that older people get a second career with meaningful work; the government gets talent it needs; and the American people are well served. Apparently,
IBM has done this sort of thing successfully in the past, with an initiative called "Transition to Teaching" which allowed IBM people to try their
hand in the classroom.
I mentioned a second document: it was an article from the Washington Post, which addressed government compensation. For the first time, a
significant number of federal employees at the top of the government salary scale hit a General Schedule "pay cap." The cap is set at $149,000 so
presumably most of America is not going to feel obliged to send care packages. Still, we're talking about thousands of people who are key to the
operation of the government. If they stay in government service, inflation will continue to eat their pay, and their pensions that are related to
their salaries, will be smaller than they perhaps anticipated. One has a feeling that this pay cap could influence even more people to depart than
otherwise, taking their talents to the private sector.
So, the private sector is encouraging their retirees to go to work for the government at the same time that the pay policies of the government
maybe inducing some of the best and brightest to depart federal service and seek opportunities in the private sector. What’s wrong with this
picture?
Tainted Drugs Put Focus on the F.D.A.
The New York TimesBy Gardiner Harris
After a contaminated medicine from China was linked to as many as 17 deaths in the United States, members of Congress clamored for changes while
regulators defended their actions.
The drug was a common antibiotic, and the year was 1999. But in recent weeks, the Food and Drug Administration has faced an almost identical
crisis.
Nineteen deaths have been linked to contaminated heparin, a crucial blood thinner manufactured in China. Again the drug agency became aware of the
problem only after hundreds were sickened. Again Congress is investigating.
The F.D.A. admitted that it violated its own policies by failing to inspect the China plant, and on Friday it said it had alerted border agents to
detain suspect heparin shipments.
"This heparin problem has happened before with other drugs," said William Hubbard, a former F.D.A. deputy commissioner, "and it's going to keep
happening until Congress fixes this problem."
The Institute of Medicine, the Government Accountability Office and the F.D.A.'s own Science Board have all issued reports saying poor management
and scientific inadequacies make the agency incapable of protecting the country against unsafe drugs, medical devices and food.
Indeed, in the years since the last China drug scandal, the share of drugs coming from that country has soared while the F.D.A.'s inspections of
overseas drug plants have dropped. There are 566 plants in China that export drugs to the United States, but the agency inspected just 13 of them
last year.
The agency does not have the money to inspect many more, and the Bush administration has no plans to fix this most basic of problems. The
administration's budget calls for a 3 percent increase in allocated funds next year, not enough even to keep up with rising costs.
Congress, though, may finally heed the calls of Mr. Hubbard and others and allocate far more money. The Senate passed a budget resolution on
Friday to give the F.D.A. an additional $375 million, a 20 percent increase over this year.
"Congress has a responsibility to close the glaring gaps in food and drug safety that have begun to overwhelm the F.D.A.," said Senator Edward M.
Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who pushed for the new financing.
Several top legislators in the Senate and House said they supported the increase.
"F.D.A. needs a serious infusion of resources and strong leadership dedicated to reforming the agency," said Representative Henry A. Waxman,
Democrat of California, who is chairman of the House oversight committee.
Representatives John D. Dingell and Bart Stupak, powerful Democrats from Michigan, said they would fight to support the increase in the agency's
budget.
But the new money is far from assured. President Bush has threatened to veto appropriations that go beyond his requests, and there are powerful
interests in Congress that are skeptical of increased agency financing.
Among the skeptics is Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, who leads the House appropriations subcommittee with authority over
the agency. Ms. DeLauro said that although the F.D.A. was in crisis, "I don’t want to throw money at an agency that doesn't have the
infrastructure to carry out its mission."
Some top agency officials are simply "incompetent," she added, and real change can occur only with a new administration.
An F.D.A. spokeswoman, Julie Zawisza, said the agency was "looking at a number of options in addition to more foreign inspections to increase our
presence abroad and our ability to detect problems." For instance, the agency is opening an office in China to conduct audits and inspections.
The uncertain prospects of the increased financing have led many in Congress to consider a user-fee system to pay for foreign inspections. The
agency already relies heavily on user fees to pay for new drug reviews. Mr. Stupak said such a system might be the only way to pay for the necessary
inspections of an industry rapidly moving to places like China.
"Why should the taxpayer pay for these inspections so that you can close a plant here and open it over there to ship it back?" Mr. Stupak said.
"It will be sustainable income so that we don't have to get into these budget battles every year."
Eighty percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients of drugs consumed in the United States are manufactured abroad; 40 percent are made in
China and India. Meanwhile, the F.D.A. has cut back on its foreign drug inspections, which declined to 341 in 2006 from 391 in 2000.
Among the only foreign inspections that the F.D.A. still conducts are those done before a drug's approval. Spot foreign inspections are rare. For
logistical reasons, the agency warns foreign plants when its inspectors intend to visit, something not done domestically. All of this needs to
change, said Mr. Stupak, who wants the oversight of foreign plants to be as strict as those governing domestic ones.
Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's health research group, said a fee-based inspection system was "a terrible idea" because it would
lead the agency to become more lax with those who pay their salaries.
"The F.D.A. is too important to be left to the industry to fund it," Dr. Wolfe said.
Manufacturers would support a user-fee system in hopes of making medicines safer and competition fairer, said Guy Villax, chief executive of
Hovione, a drug maker based in Portugal with plants in Europe, the United States, China and Macao.
Plants in China and India are rarely inspected by Western governments, which can reduce costs dramatically, Mr. Villax said. Even the Chinese did
not inspect the plant making contaminated heparin because, regulators there said, everything made at the plant was shipped overseas.
"The globalization of active pharmaceutical ingredients has happened very quickly," Mr. Villax said, "and the government agencies are very slow at
adapting to changing circumstances."
Letting the Market Drive Transportation
The
Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton and Spencer S. Hsu
It took a few moments for Tyler Duvall, the top policymaker at the Department of Transportation, to digest the news from the Hill. But when he
realized what it meant, he was stunned.
Last year, Congress decided not to dictate how the department could spend its discretionary funds. No earmarks, no strings, no arm-twisting from
lawmakers to direct money to bus systems or other mass-transit projects in hundreds of communities nationwide.
Duvall and other top department officials were staring at nearly $1 billion. And they knew exactly how to spend it.
They used the money to seed five high-profile experiments, in New York, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Miami and Seattle, that feature "congestion
pricing" -- tolls that increase when traffic is heavy. The idea is to reduce traffic by discouraging some motorists from driving during peak
hours.
"It's almost sort of un-American that we should be forced to sit and be stuck in traffic," said D.J. Gribbin, the department's general counsel and
liaison to the White House, who worked closely with Duvall on the project.
For Gribbin, Duvall and Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, the goal is not just to combat congestion but to upend the traditional way
transportation projects are funded in this country. They believe that tolls paid by motorists, not tax dollars, should be used to construct and
maintain roads.
They and other political appointees have spent the latter part of President Bush's two terms laboring behind the scenes to shrink the federal role
in road-building and public transportation. They have also sought to turn highways into commodities that can be sold or leased to private firms and
used by motorists for a price. In Duvall and Gribbin's view, unleashing the private sector and introducing market forces could lead to innovation and
more choices for the public, much as the breakup of AT&T transformed telecommunications.
But their ideas and actions have alarmed transit advocates, the trucking industry, states struggling to build rail projects and members of
Congress from both parties.
"They have a myopic view," said Rep. John L. Mica (Fla.), ranking Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Pricing
transportation to drive down traffic may make market sense, but it harms the public, he said. "This was a country based on some system of equality.
People are paying their taxes and have representation. You can't exclude them from having a fair return."
Critics such as Mica do not oppose all tolling, but they argue that the traditional mechanism for funding roads and transit, the federal gas tax,
which has not been raised since 1993, must be increased so that the nation's Highway Trust Fund does not run out of money in three years. Some
Democrats contend that the Bush administration wants to starve the fund so that states will be forced to sell off roads to private firms, charge
tolls and ration the best access to those willing to pay for a faster commute.
"Everything they're doing is designed to drive things to privatization," said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the House Transportation
and Infrastructure highways and transit subcommittee. DeFazio said the nation long ago settled that roads are public goods. "They're just trying to
undo 200 years of history and go back to the Boston Post Road."
Even if the next president reverses its policies, the Bush administration will leave a legacy of new toll roads across the
country, a growing number of public roads leased to private companies, and dozens of stalled commuter rail, streetcar and subway projects --
including the $5 billion extension of Metro to Dulles International Airport.
To read the entire article, click
here.
The Coalition For Effective Change Presents: Ethics and Politics During a Time of
Transition
March 19, 2008
8:15 AM TO NOON
The National Academy of Public Administration
900 7th Street, N.W., Suite 600
Washington, DC 20001
Presenters include:
- Marilynn Glenn, General Counsel, Office of Government Ethics
- Ana Galindo-Marrone, Chief, Hatch Act Unit, Office of Special Counsel
- Bill Bransford, General Counsel, Senior Executives Association
- Bill Hughes, General Counsel, National Association of Federal Veterinarians
- To be determined Designated Agency Ethics Official
Admission is free, and participants MUST pre-register for this course. To register, please call Maya Laws at 202-463-8400 x327 or email to
mlaws@shawbransford.com with your name, mailing address and phone number. Please note:
Registration is open through March 18, 2008. For more information, please contact Bill Bransford
at 202-463-8400.
