EDITORIAL: Reforming the bureaucracy
Incompetent or slothful bureaucrats may be among the biggest losers in a Donald Trump presidency.
Newsmax reports that the president-elect hopes to make it a top priority to remake the bureaucracy by looking at a hiring freeze and “addressing automatic raises [and] the inability to fire workers who perform poorly.”
The Free Beacon noted last year that it takes almost six months to fire a federal employee — assuming the agency follows the proper protocol.
A 2015 report from the General Accounting Office revealed that many supervisors opt to tolerate poor performance rather than to undertake a long, drawn-out process and risk litigation. The office found that the federal government dismissed only 3,489 employees for substandard work in 2013, just 0.18 percent of all personnel.
“It’s nearly impossible to fire somebody,” Rep. Jacob Chafetz, a Utah Republican, told Newsmax. “When the overwhelming majority do a good job and the one bad apple is there viewing pornography, I want people to be held accountable.”
No doubt delivering on such reforms will be a herculean task, given the power of entrenched beltway interests, particularly federal unions. But just putting workers on notice that their job security depends on performance might generate positive results.
A CBS News report last year concluded that administrative red tape making it burdensome to dismiss federal workers for cause or misconduct is costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Mr. Trump should aggressively move forward in this area in the interests of increasing both efficiency and accountability.
