Opinions of Feds Early Out

Opinion + Letters to the Editor

Washington Post February 4, 2025 at 4:51 p.m.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/04/buyout-federal-employees-civil-service/

The clock is ticking:

How feds should think about the buyout offer

Should they accept?

Post readers, including former civil servants, weigh in.

The decision federal employees must make by Feb. 6 is a difficult one at best. As a former human resources professional, my opinions might be helpful.

First, on the positive side: Though the time-bomb nature of the offer is a clear hallmark of President Donald Trump, the workforce reduction survey process is common in agencies such as the Defense Department. Second, the Office of Personnel Management is overseeing the process. Traditionally, the OPM knows the HR rules, and in this case it might be the adult in a room full of children. Third, the email and FAQs contain known and conventional HR answers about some of the offer’s conditions.

Now, the negatives: First, administrative leave (going home with pay) has been found legal only in cases where management can show employee misconduct or trust issues that make it clear an employee must be off the worksite while paperwork is done to remove them for cause. I am not sure it will be legal for the vast majority of ordinary feds to just go home and continue getting paid.

Second, if the new OPM email process is not Privacy Act compliant, that could delay or sink the initiative. Third, there is no federal budget for the period through Sept. 30. If the government closes while thousands of federal employees are on terminal leave at home, the affected employees could see unprecedented paperwork and pay delays. Such delays might also occur without a closure and are a large risk. In any case, getting the paperwork done promptly will almost certainly be an unprecedented disaster. Note that HR and payroll staffers who do the paperwork themselves might take the offer.

Opinions on this topic

If you can’t afford to lose, don’t gamble. Stay employed.

If you are eligible to retire between now and Sept. 30, the risks are lower, but normal retirement processing time (usually up to 120 days) and services will probably take much longer. If you cannot absorb several months without pay, don’t take the offer. Timely pay might not occur — not because the offer is bogus, but due to legal processing and volume delays. Lastly, if you must have medical insurance for yourself or your family, do not leave your current position without another job lined up that offers health coverage.

It is impossible to predict the unknown or unexpected changes that might occur between now and Sept. 30. If you can’t afford to lose, don’t gamble. Stay employed.

God bless, and good luck.

Charles E. Buhl, Ashburn

Regarding the Jan. 30 front-page article “Buyout proposal highlights Musk’s broad influence”:

I urge all federal employees to reject the Trump administration’s buyout offer for the following reasons:

A. Given the chaos of this process and questions about its legality, I think it’s likely you will never be paid once your employment is terminated.

B. There will be no glowing letter of recommendation from the Trump administration. It considers you unreliable and disloyal, which is why it targeted your position for elimination.

C. Any legal recourse after the fact, despite there being no cause for the buyouts, could take a very long time (if it’s even possible) because the new administration has abandoned the rule of law and politicized the Justice Department.

D. You will be cast adrift in a job market flooded with other federal employees who end up taking the deal.

Don’t believe anything you are told. Federal workers are no more than pawns in these efforts to destroy our government.

Cheryl Kelly, Henderson, Nevada

Trump attacked the federal workforce

As a former federal employee, I was surprised at how quickly President Donald Trump attacked the federal workforce with his barrage of executive orders, culminating in a buyout offer. It was a clear push to sidestep Congress and shrink the federal workforce through executive bullying.

In an impassioned plea to federal workers, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia), who is the representative of many federal employees, urged them not to take the deal. Yet Kaine’s plea fell flat on its face as he told feds to (please) stay, keep going to work and keep doing a good job because America depends on them. Lawmakers in Kaine’s position owe federal employees more than an emotional appeal.

Yes, many federal employees will stay because, as I have seen firsthand, we are blessed to have people in this country who are dutifully drawn to serving the public. However, if America wants to maintain its status as a leading nation, relying on regular people who make the government run to just “do the right thing” is a flimsy and unsustainable rationale, and it will probably allow Trump to significantly degrade the bureaucracy over the next four years — which is exactly what he wants.

For too long, bureaucrats have been a scapegoat for our dysfunctional government. It’s civilian federal employees who show up to work to administer the services that save lives, maintain our global influence, feed and care for children, and lift people out of poverty.

If well-intentioned representatives passed laws that would actually support and modernize the federal workforce, that would make their pleas not to take the buyout more meaningful. Unfortunately, it will be Americans who pay the price over the next four years when our government programs suffer as good-hearted federal employees save their sanity and leave.

Anna Leonard, Bahama, North Carolina

Did the reduction in force save the government money? Absolutely not!

In the late 1970s and early ’80s, when I was employed at NASA, a similar workforce reduction took place. My wife, who was employed by the National Institutes of Health, was in the same situation. We did not take the money and run, but many senior personnel did.

Did the reduction in force save the government money? Absolutely not! The people who left went to work for various consulting firms, known at the time as Beltway bandits. Federal workers collected the buyout money and worked for the bandits at a significant increase in salary. The government still had to deliver its products and services, so it gave competitive contracts to the bandits, and the same employees continued to function as they previously did, costing the government more money with significantly less managerial oversight.

The contracts went on with a slightly different objective: The incentive used to be to save money for the government and get the job done, but afterward, the priority was to just make money. Here we go again.

Howard Pedolsky, Rockville

Thank civil servants

The Trump administration is on a crusade to dismantle the country’s nonpartisan civil service and replace it with political appointees. The Jan. 25 online news article “Loyalty tests and MAGA checks: Inside the Trump White House’s intense screening of job-seekers” reported that White House personnel director Sergio Gor told Fox News that in addition to hiring, his team is “cleaning house” by rooting out workers disloyal to President Donald Trump.

Trump aides are reviewing social media posts to see what applicants and career civil servants have said and who they’ve taken photos with. They’ve been asked to detail when their “MAGA revelation” moment occurred and to prove their “enthusiasm” for enacting Trump’s agenda. It has also been reported that some career civil servants have been asked which candidate they voted for and to provide information about political donations, in violation of the Hatch Act.

Equally shocking is the new administration’s lack of understanding of the difference between a public servant and a political appointee. Political appointees are not “public servants” in the same way we understand career civil servants to be.

Career civil servants at the federal level work for whoever is president, regardless of political party. They implement the laws, rules and regulations passed by Congress and adjudicated by our legal system. Upon entering federal service, they take an oath to support and defend the Constitution — not a specific person, political party or agenda.

Contrast these federal workers with political appointees (specifically, those appointed under Schedule C). Many political appointees — there are about 4,000 — do not have expertise in the laws, rules and regulations essential to ensuring that federal programs are administered in a fair and impartial manner. Their primary qualification is their pledge to implement the president’s agenda.

Although every president should be allowed to hire like-minded individuals to fill key government positions, trying to root out career public servants violates the entire concept of a nonpartisan workforce. The new appointees are going to have to rely on the career public servants to help them implement their agenda, and the vast majority will do so as they have under every president they have served.

America needs a good, nonpartisan federal workforce staffed by well-trained, experienced individuals who place loyalty to the Constitution above all else. We should be thanking them for their service to their country, not demonizing them.

Matthew Murguía, Kensington

Bad for business

President Donald Trump and company have got it completely wrong: The government is not a business; it’s a service. Its goal is not to make money; rather, it is to do for the American people what the corporate world can’t or won’t do.

Corporations can’t operate and maintain an interstate highway system. They can’t properly take care of veterans. They can’t run an intelligence community or sustain a nuclear weapons stockpile. They aren’t big enough to accomplish these things, and they can’t get rich doing them.

The taxpayer funds these organizations and activities for one simple reason: to serve the needs of the American people. The government has no other purpose.

The titans of industry and their disciples who are running the government now have the profit-making model in their heads: They want to run it like an “efficient” business, which means they want to cut costs by laying off staff and eliminating “inefficient” functions. They’ve made a good start.

We didn’t create a government to run it like a business. But that’s a terrific way to destroy it.

Bruce Carnes, Fairfax