Comment Letter on Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the rule proposing a new Schedule Policy/Career and making other changes to the federal civil service. Based on my research on state civil service reforms, the proposed rule offers the opportunity to modernize and improve the federal civil service without the dangers of politicization or patronage that opponents fear.

Although discussions of this and other federal proposals have focused on lessons to be learned from past federal efforts, as regards to the civil service the states have performed their traditional function as laboratories of democracy and have engaged in many reforms that are relevant to the proposed rule. Most importantly, many states have limited or ended legal restrictions on the discipline or removal of state employees, ended the ability of state employees to appeal to an outside tribunal for discipline or removal, or moved to complete at-will employment. The evidence of these state-level reforms has generally been positive and there have been few if any examples of politicization that opponents of reform feared.

Judge Glock is the director of research and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal.