Feb 18, 2005  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

A high-level gay employee at the U.S. Office of Special Council was among seven OSC employees that received termination notices last week after refusing to be transferred to distant cities in a staff shakeup that critics have called a purge of employees considered disloyal by OSC director Scott Bloch.

A second gay employee resigned to take a job outside OSC rather than accept the transfer ordered by Bloch, according to sources familiar with OSC.

Sources familiar with the agency said Bloch targeted a total of 12 employees — including the only two known gay staffers — for involuntary transfers, in part, because they disagreed with his decision to curtail OSC’s role in investigating and adjudicating complaints of employment discrimination against gay federal workers.

Congress created OSC to protect federal employees from discrimination as well as retaliation in cases where they come forward as “whistleblowers” to disclose government corruption or mismanagement. President Clinton assigned OSC a new role of adjudicating sexual orientation discrimination cases after he issued an executive order banning discrimination against gay employees in the federal workforce.

Last month, Bloch informed the employees named in the transfer order that they had 10 days to decide whether to accept the transfers. Seven were to be reassigned to a proposed new OSC field office in Detroit; four were to be sent to an existing field office in Dallas; and one was to be sent to a field office in Oakland, Calif.

According to OSC sources, five employees initially accepted the reassignments and seven declined and are now in the process of being dismissed from their jobs. The federal watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which has monitored the OSC developments, said one of the five employees who initially accepted the transfer has since obtained a new job outside OSC and resigned from OSC. That employee was one of the two gay OSC staffers named by Bloch in the reassignment order.

OSC spokesperson Cathy Deeds disputed claims that the reorganization was part of a purge of employees. She told the Washington Post that the mandatory transfers were part of a staff reorganization aimed at improving OSC’s ability to process employee discrimination cases.

Deeds and Bloch have not responded to repeated requests for comment by the Blade.

Six members of Congress last week called on the Government Accounting Office to open an investigation into Bloch’s reorganization action. Others have called on the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, which has jurisdiction over OSC, to conduct an oversight hearing on Bloch’s actions since taking over OSC last year.

Critics say Bloch is seeking to stack OSC with conservative, religious “cronies,” some of whom he has retained as consultants through no-bid contracts.

President Bush named Bloch as head of OSC in late 2003 and he began his tenure there in Jan. 2004. Prior to starting at OSC, he worked as deputy director of the Justice Department’s Task Force for Faith-Based & Community Initiatives.

Gay claims are ‘dead on arrival’
Almost immediately after starting work at OSC, Bloch removed all references to OSC’s role in addressing sexual orientation discrimination cases from the OSC Web site and from OSC discrimination complaint forms. Bloch initially said he did not believe OSC had legal authority to adjudicate gay cases, despite assertions by legal experts that existing federal law barred sexual orientation discrimination in the federal workforce.

In response to complaints by members of Congress, the White House issued a statement saying President Bush stands behind the Clinton administration policy of prohibiting workplace discrimination against gay federal employees. Bloch responded by saying he would abide by this policy, but the gay federal workers group GLOBE has said Bloch has failed to take adequate steps to do so.

“Since Scott Bloch came on board at OSC, sexual orientation discrimination claims have been dead on arrival,” said one of the OSC employees ensnared in Bloch’s reorganization, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“I believe it was his motive all along to get rid of people tied in any way to the past administration or people who disagree with him on the sexual orientation policy,” the employee said.

Another source familiar with OSC said, “cases involving sexual orientation discrimination are treated differently than any other complaints” under Bloch’s tenure. According to this source, gay cases are “initially ...