Administration Moves to Protect Key Appointees...
Just weeks before leaving office, the Interior Department's top lawyer has shifted half a dozen key deputies -- including two former political appointees who have been involved in controversial environmental decisions -- into senior civil service posts.
The transfer of political appointees into permanent federal positions, called "burrowing" by career officials, creates security for those employees, and at least initially will deprive the incoming Obama administration of the chance to install its preferred appointees in some key jobs....
Between March 1 and Nov. 3, according to the federal Office of Personnel Management, the Bush administration allowed 20 political appointees to become career civil servants.... The personnel moves come as Bush administration officials are scrambling to cement in place policy and regulatory initiatives that touch on issues such as federal drinking-water standards, air quality at national parks, mountaintop mining and fisheries limits.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Hot on the heels of Senate Democrats nursing back to life the senate canker of Joe Lieberman comes the news that the Bush/Cheney administration is stealthily installing a number of moles to undermine the incoming Obama administration.
In the Department of the Interior alone, Interior Solicitor David L. Bernhardt has moved to place six deputies in senior agency positions with one stroke, including two, Robert D. Comer, Rocky Mountain regional solicitor, named to the civil service post of associate solicitor for mineral resources; and Matthew McKeown, deputy associate solicitor for mineral resources to replace Comer in what is also a career post, both converted from political appointees to civil service status.
Comer is to be remembered in regard to
a grazing agreement that the Bureau of Land Management had struck with a Wyoming rancher, saying Comer used "pressure and intimidation" to produce the settlement and pushed it through "with total disregard for the concerns raised by career field personnel."
McKeown:
as Idaho's deputy attorney general had sued to overturn a Clinton administration rule barring road-building in certain national forests -- has been criticized by environmentalists for promoting the cause of private property owners over the public interest on issues such as grazing and logging.
One career Interior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his position, said McKeown will "have a huge impact on a broad swath of the West" in his new position, advising the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service on "all the programs they implement." Comer, the official added, will help shape mining policy in his new assignment.
According to the Post article the Labor Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development may also be affected by these stealth appointments.
The Interior appointments are being monitored by Robert Irvin, Defenders of Wildlife.
http://www.defenders.org/
Alex Bastani, American Federation of Government Employees, is on the Labor aspect:
http://www.afge.org/
The Post states that such appointments can be reassigned, if not removed, after 120 days.
Unfortunately, a lot of damage can be done in 120 days. Our drinking water, a ravaged environment...