Archives for October 2016

 CoA Institute questions role of former Obama appointee on the Department of Veterans Affairs Presidential transition team

Washington, DC – Cause of Action Institute (CoA Institute) today sent two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, one to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and one to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), seeking records on what has become an election-year tradition in Washington D.C.: political appointees at federal agencies attempting to transition to permanent career positions. This practice, commonly referred to as “burrowing,” often entails political employees gaining unfair advantage and using their connections to obtain permanent positions.
Cause of Action Institute Vice President John Vecchione: “Selecting permanent federal government employees based on ideology instead of qualifications is a disservice to American taxpayers and results in less qualified civil servants. Burrowing also provides the outgoing presidential administration the ability to place ideological allies within the federal government permanently, creating a more politicized bureaucracy. American taxpayers have a right to know how many Obama administration political appointees are gaming the system and attempting to transition to permanent positions.”
In an effort to curtail burrowing, OPM in 2009 began requiring any agency attempting to appoint current or former political appointees to a competitive, career position to first obtain approval from OPM. However, it is unclear how often agencies request waivers or how often waivers are granted.
Attempts to burrow during the final year of the Obama administration have already come to light. In the FOIA sent today, CoA Institute has requested records relating to an Obama administration appointee burrowed at the VA.  Gina Farrisee was first appointed by the Obama administration to serve as the VA’s Assistant Human Resources Secretary in September 2013. Nearly three years later, on May 2, 2016, the VA announced that Ms. Farrisee was being named the VA’s Deputy Chief of Staff, a permanent career position.
Ms. Farrisee is also apparently a key member of the VA White House transition team that is preparing the agency for the next administration and that she, together with a current political appointee, will be managing the transition process at the VA.  It therefore appears that the top two roles on the VA transition team are led by current or former political appointees, raising questions about the transparency of that process. CoA Institute accordingly has requested all records relating to Ms. Farrisee’s role on the VA Presidential transition team.
The FOIA to OPM can be found HERE
The FOIA to VA can be found HERE
# # #

Washington, DC – Cause of Action Institute (CoA Institute) has sent Federal Records Act (FRA) notices to Secretary of State John Kerry and Archivist of the United States David Ferriero urging them to fulfill their statutory obligations to recover former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s work-related email records from a private email service provider.

Last month, at a House Oversight & Government Reform Committee hearing about Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) compliance at the State Department, Under Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy testified that his agency had undertaken only minimal efforts to retrieve work-related emails created or received by Secretary Powell on his private AOL email account.  Upon learning that Secretary Powell no longer had access to this account, the State Department merely requested that he contact his email provider to see if any records were still recoverable.  Secretary Powell never responded to that request, and the State Department took no further action, despite a request from NARA to contact AOL directly.  Under Secretary Kennedy justified State Department inaction by claiming that the agency lacks legal authority to take further action to recover agency records from Secretary Powell’s email service provider.

Cause of Action Institute Vice President John Vecchione: “The position that the State Department has no legal authority to take direct action to recover Secretary Powell’s work-related emails is absurd and should not be left unchallenged. American taxpayers have a substantial interest in ensuring that federal records are properly saved, archived, and available to the public through FOIA.  The State Department and NARA must live up to statutory obligations designed to keep the government accountable and transparent, and to preserve a written record of the federal government for future generations.”

The State Department’s position is not supported by federal law.  Not only do the email records in question belong to the State Department—as recently confirmed by the D.C. Circuit in Competitive Enterprise Institute v. White House Office of Science & Technology Policy—but the FRA gives the Secretary of State (as well as the Archivist of the United States) the authority, acting through the U.S. Attorney General, to take necessary legal action to recover alienated records.  The right to initiate action through the Attorney General is a mandatory obligation—in other words, the Secretary and the Archivist are required to initiate actions to recover Secretary Powell’s work-related email.

CoA Institute’s letters include FOIA requests for copies of all of Secretary Powell’s email, as well records concerning what efforts, if any, the State Department and NARA have (or have not) taken to retrieve these records that ultimately belong to the American public—records that would reveal the diplomatic activities of the Bush administration during politically contentious years.

Click here to view the letter to Secretary John Kerry

Click here to view the letter to ARCHIVIST David Ferriero