Jan 28, 2005  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

Scott J. Bloch, the controversial head the U.S. government office charged with protecting federal employees from discrimination, has threatened to fire 12 high-level employees — two of whom are gay — unless they agree to be reassigned to positions in other cities.

Three government watchdog groups called Bloch’s action another in a series of moves aimed at packing the Office of Special Counsel with religious, right wing cronies and threatening its longstanding mission of protecting federal employees from harassment or intimidation for exposing corruption or incompetence.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Bloch’s current pattern of leadership threatens to transform the OSC from an independent agency whose mission is to protect the merit system into a role model for destroying it,” said the leaders of the Government Accountability Project, the Project on Government Oversight, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

The three groups made the statement in a Jan. 10 letter to Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), who serve as chair and ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on Government Affairs, which has jurisdiction over the OSC.

The groups called on the committee to conduct an oversight hearing on Bloch’s “illegal personnel practices and the culture of fear he has created at OSC.”

An OSC spokesperson told the Washington Post Bloch’s decision to reassign the 12 employees was part of an OSC reorganization plan aimed at reducing the office’s longstanding problem of retaining a large backlog of cases. The spokesperson, Cathy Deeds, called allegations by the watchdog groups that Bloch was conducting a purge “outrageous and inaccurate,” according to the Washington Post.

Deeds and Bloch did not return Blade calls by press time.

Congress created the OSC in the 1980s as an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency to safeguard the civil service system, which bases its hiring practices for most of the federal workforce on merit rather than political connections. Among other things, OSC is charged with protecting federal employees from harassment and intimidation under the Whistleblower Protection Act in cases where they expose corruption or gross incompetence.

During the Clinton administration, the OSC took on an added role of adjudicating sexual orientation discrimination cases filed by gay federal employees. The Clinton White House assigned that task to the OSC after Clinton issued an executive order banning sexual orientation discrimination in the federal workplace.

Bloch took steps to diminish OSC’s role in addressing sexual orientation cases in January 2004, shortly after President Bush appointed him to the OSC post. Bush administration officials, responding to complaints by members of Congress, directed Bloch to resume the office’s enforcement role on gay cases, but he has resisted doing so.

Prior to joining the Bush administration, Bloch practiced law in Lawrence, Kan. He also served as a research fellow for the Claremont Institute, an ultra-conservative think tank in California which boasts of “fighting the gay rights movement” as one of its mottos, before starting his first Bush administration post at the Justice Department. He served there as deputy director of the department’s Task Force for Faith-Based & Community Initiatives.

He began his post at OSC in January 2004, replacing lesbian attorney Elaine Kaplan, who had been appointed by President Clinton. The law creating the OSC established a fixed, five-year term for the director’s job, which prevents a president from removing the director unless it can be shown that he or she has engaged in misconduct or violated the law.

Anthony Vergnetti, an attorney representing some of the 12 OSC employees ordered to be reassigned, said Bloch gave them all 10 days notice to decide whether to accept the reassignments or resign or be fired. Seven were to be reassigned to a newly created OSC regional office in Detroit; four were to be sent to an existing OSC office in Dallas, and one was to be sent to an office in Oakland, Calif., Vergnetti said. Should they choose to accept the transfers, Vergnetti said, the 12 employees must report for work at the new locations in 60 days, a development that would create hardships for the employees, some of whom have families with school children in the D.C. area.

Deadline extension
Vergnetti said Bloch has since extended the deadline for the employees’ decision on the reassignments by another 10 calendar days. He said none of the ...