The Energy Shadow Government
December 10, 2008
by Darrell Delamaide
Washington civil servants are bracing for that personnel hurricane that
sweeps through the federal bureaucracy every eight years or so, when a new
administration places thousands of political appointees in all the top jobs
-- and some not-so-top jobs.
These bureaucrats call themselves the "we-be's" -- as in, "We be there when
you arrive, and we be there when you leave."
They enjoy a sometimes uneasy coexistence with the political appointees,
adapting themselves to the priorities of a new administration, sometimes
pushing back and influencing policy themselves. While those career staffers
have a grasp of the critical issues, they are clearly in subordinated
positions to both the political appointees and the elected officials, who
are the ones held accountable by the people.
At the Department of Energy, as in all the other cabinet departments, top
policymakers from the secretary through a raft of assistant secretaries will
be nominated by the new president and approved by the new Senate.
In all, the department has about 135 appointee positions, according to the
latest edition of the Plum Book, the definitive government listing. That
edition was released this November for the new president-elect's transition.
The agency in total has some 100,000 employees and contractors, so political
appointees represent a minuscule percentage of the overall staff. But the
bulk of these, more than four-fifths, are contract employees doing things
like cleaning up weapons sites. And then most of the civil service employees
are involved in programmatic tasks such as implementing legislation and are
not affected by changes at the policy level.
"So the influence of the appointees makes itself felt," says Bill Wicker, a
former DOE political appointee who is now the spokesman for the Democratic
majority on the Senate Energy Committee.
The career bureaucrats can influence policy, as long as it is in line with
the overall objectives of the administration. Some of the senior careerists
are the go-to people in their fields. "These people are well known," says
Wicker. "They represent the institutional memory of the department."
Others, however, can see three or four years' work on a project simply
upended when a new team comes in with a different set of priorities.
Needless-to-say, their powers are kept in check by virtue of the fact that
they report directly to the president's people.
New Faces
Presidential appointees requiring Senate confirmation are known as PAS in
the acronym-obsessed jargon of Washington. There are also presidential
appointees that don't require confirmation (PA). Then there is a chunk of
non-career senior executive service (SES) officers who occupy the senior
positions above the GS pay scale but below the presidential appointee level.
Last but not least, there are the Schedule C employees who occupy positions
that require a confidential relationship with any of these other political
appointees -- such as a press spokesman or personal assistant.
The Energy Department has 20 presidential appointments requiring Senate
confirmation. These range from the secretary, deputy secretary, under
secretaries and assistant secretaries well into the top echelons of the
National Nuclear Security Administration to positions such as deputy
administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation.
The number of appointive positions can vary, particularly in the lower
categories of non-career SES and Schedule C. The SES appointments, for
instance, can only be made for 10 percent of the available positions across
the entire administration. Some SES positions, such as auditor, are reserved
for career appointments to ensure the objectivity and integrity of the
position, and are not available for political appointees.
At the Energy Department, for instance, there are 340 general SES positions
available for a non-career appointment, so that a maximum of 34 could be
political appointees. There is also a smattering of limited emergency,
limited term or other statutory exceptions, totaling just 17 for the agency.
Come January, most of the previous political appointments will pack their
bags. Some Schedule C appointees, however, manage to stay on by getting into
a civil service position before the transition -- an age-old phenomenon
known as "burrowing in." Civil service hires in the final months of an
administration are supposed to get a special review to catch this maneuver,
but somehow appointees still succeed in burrowing in.
Filling the empty positions with new faces will be the task of the
transition team. In the Clinton and Bush transitions, the full-time
transition team, drawn largely from the campaign staff, typically worked
with an advisory board of experts -- many of them top political contributors
-- to identify and recruit personnel for the top appointments.
At the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, things are much simpler. There
are only five political appointees -- the five commissioners -- and they
require Senate confirmation. They don't have to leave when a new
administration comes in. In fact, the president appoints them, but cannot
fire them.
The president, however, can designate a new chairman, who generally will
belong to the party in the White House. But the president must await a
commission vacancy to actually appoint a new commissioner and shift the
balance of power if there is a change of party. No more than three
commissioners can belong to the same party, so currently FERC has three
Republican commissioners and two Democrats. Normally, however, a chairman
who is replaced will not want to remain as a commissioner and will resign.
Politics is always evolving. And this year the election was premised on
change. That's something that the political appointees know all too well.
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EnergyBiz magazine is the thought-leading, award-winning publication
of the emerging power industry. This article originally appeared in the
November/December 2008 issue. |