TESTIMONY OF HON. EDWARD J. DERWINSKI, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

Representative DERWINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chuck, I hate to take exception to your introduction, but it is because of my basic nonpolitical nature that I am appearing before you. I believe that H.R. 10 is a bill that reeks of political partisanship, the kind we do not want in Federal Government. I honestly believe it should not be passed, that in no way could it help the functions of the Federal system, or that of Federal employees.

I would like to ask unanimous consent that my complete statement be inserted in the record, and I will touch on one or two points.

Senator SASSER. Without objection your statement will be made a part of the record at the conclusion of your testimony.

Representative DERWINSKI. Mr. Chairman, all our evidence indicates that the Federal employee does not consider himself as a secondclass citizen, and there is not any demand whatsoever from rank-andfile members of the Federal civil service for this bill.

Our evidence is that the average Federal employee is very happy with the Hatch Act, in fact, almost proud of it.

The statement they always come up with is when approached, in a political fashion, is to say I am "hatched." That is not an apologetic term, that is a statement of pride, a statement of feeling that they are in a good position, a dedicated position, serving as Federal employees. This Hatch Act serves the employees well, and they favor it.

We have no evidence that anywhere in the country is there any grassroot support among Federal employees for the passage of this bill.

I would like to point out that there were 900,000 Federal employees of which 300,000 are under classified merit system at the time this bill was passed, almost 40 years ago.

Now, including the postal employees, we have almost 2,800,000 Federal employees. The protection of the Hatch Act is more important now than ever before. Then I believe that, and I say this rising above partisanship, President Carter has a number of programs intended to reorganize and streamline the Government, and I think the passage of H.R. 10 would make his task much more difficult, because it would add a political element to the structure of the Federal Government that now does not exist.

In fact, Nicholas Von Hoffman, who is a reputable liberal columnist, in discussing the subject, and I am quoting from his column of May 21, 1977 said,

"The first time the President tries to put this creaking Government to some good and efficient use, they, the Federal employees, will thank him for H.R. 10 by shoving their fist down his throat.

He believes that the passage of H.R. 10 will inject political factors into the very structure of our Federal system, and make it difficult for the President to impose some decisions.

To sum it all up, we struggled with this bill in the House 2 years ago. We struggled with it on the floor of the House for 16 hours earlier in the session, despite the vote in the House, which was fairly predictable, the evidence in the process, and I make the point, the evidence

is that the Federal employee is not interested in the passage of H.R. 10, nor is the average citizen taxpayer.

What little interest there was in the bill was generated by one or two Federal employee unions, who in fact have used a mailing list, and there was no spontaneous interest in the passage of this bill.

I would hope this committee would take a good long hard look at H.R. 10 before giving it any further momentum.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator SASSER. Thank you, Representative Derwinski.

I will yield now to Senator Percy who is under some time constraint today.

He has to appear before another commitee.

Senator PERCY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I appreicate your courtesy very much indeed.

I wonder first, Congressman Derwinski, could you comment on Senator Scott's bill, which would allow participation of Federal employees in local elections, but not in State and Federal elections?

Representative DERWINSKI. I think it would be a positive step.

The situation varies from State to State. For example, our State of Illinois, most local elections are nonpartisan. In suburban, and downstate townships, and in village elections, they run under the various nonnational party labels, so it would not have a major impact.

In States where many of the local elections are run under national party labels, I believe Šenator Scott's suggestion would have a positive effect.

There is an obvious difference, in a Federal official looking after, let us say his concern as a resident of a school district, he is no different at that point than any other local taxpayer, but it is when his Federal position is involved in the conduct of Federal election campaigns, that the problems obviously arise.

Senator PERCY. Do you happen to know the reaction of Federal employees to revising the Hatch Act? Are they decidedly on both sides of this issue, or is there a clear-cut position the Federal employees have taken?

Representative DERWINSKI. There is clear-cut official positions from their official organizations, all claiming to be totally in support of this bill.

Now, Congressman Joe Fisher of Virginia, who represents Arlington and part of Fairfax County, I believe, conducted a poll of his constituents, and that is the most heavily impacted district in the country in terms of Federal employees, and the results of that poll were definitely in favor of retaining the present Hatch Act.

Congressman Newton Steers of Maryland recently took a similar poll, and that is Montgomery County, Bethesda, Chevy Chase area, and there again the results were the same.

The majority of his constituents supported the present Hatch Act. Senator PERCY. What is your own personal knowledge of this? Have you confirmed in your own mind the position one way or the other, with respect to Federal employees you have talked to?

1 See p. 301.

Representative DERWINSKI. All my contacts showed that the rank and file Federal employee prefers the protection of the present Hatch Act.

He does not want H.R. 10 passed, and he enjoys the protection and independence from political pressure the present law provides him. We have no evidence whatsoever that there is any rank and file enthusiasm for this bill.

Senator PERCY. As drafted, H.R. 10 contains specific protections for employees against coercion at the hands of either their superiors or employee organizations.

From your testimony, I gather you consider these protections to be insufficient.

Could you give us some specific examples of how employees' superiors or employee organizations might be able to circumvent these protections against coercion?

Representative DERWINSKI. I think it is obvious the intangibles, that go into promotions, assignments, transfers, let us say political prejudice can be a factor the employee organizations of course enter into things such as degree of effectiveness, interest they might show in someone's grievance with their superior, the degree of relationship that would exist, plus the automatic coercion which would develop. I would say the Postal Service would be the big problem, where you have a very high percentage of your membership belonging to the various postal unions, the collective pressure would be tremendous.

I think if you add to it the concern that the career employee would have, especially when he reaches middle or upper level positions, there is a change in administration, and if he had to guess right in terms of the political activity, he would obviously fear the consequences for the longevity or practicality of his career opportunities.

Senator PERCY. Now that the House has passed H.R. 10 and it is in the Senate, democratically controlled, as the House is—and you cannot get away from the fact that the leaders of the two political parties have taken different positions on this bill, so that it does become a partisan matter-would you advise Senators who agree with you, to simply oppose the bill as such, in every way they possibly can, or to look at it from a practical standpoint, and see whether additional restrictions can be built into H.R. 10 to make it a better bill than it is now, as it passed the House?

Representative DERWINSKI. I feel the Senate will exercise great wisdom in this matter. But looking at it from the political standpoint, I would think the people most concerned would be members of the President's party.

The history of the Hatch Act shows that its original passage was prompted because of the misuse of Federal personnel in primaries in 1938, and those were primaries in which the then President was unhappy with some Members of the House and Senate and attempted to discipline them in their party primaries in 1938.

I think that the individuals who are first apt to suffer the consequence of the passage of this bill might be someone who has a Democratic contest in their primaries.

I would think for their benefit, we should leave the Hatch Act alone.

Senator PERCY. I am sure they appreciate your advice.

Here is the same question I put to Senator Scott. Proponents of H.R. 10 have distinguished between policymaking Federal employees and nonpolicymaking employees, and put them into a restrictive category.

Do you feel that this is an insufficient approach, and why do you feel they have not really built in the kind of protections for Federal employees that you would like to see built in for them?

Representative DERWINSKI. I think first in a broader sense, any Federal employee who is in a policymaking position, I believe should be in some way removed, or elevated above civil service.

I think there are too many people in policymaking positions in the Federal Government that do not respond to whoever the President may be. I would address that problem by expanding the number of schedule C positions and the number of direct appointments the President may make. Anyone making policy clearly should answer to the president, people carrying on the day-to-day chores of government would be free from any direct or indirect political responsibility to pressure.

Senator PERCY. In your testimony you suggest one effect of modifying the Hatch Act is that Government employees would become more interested in political clout than in efficient job performance. This objection goes to the heart really of many people's fears over lifting Hatch Act restrictions.

Is it proper, however, for us to assume that Federal employees would be so fickle to turn their back on responsibilities, just because we would be allowing them to participate in the political process? Representative DERWINSKI. I think first of all, they would be under tremendous pressure to perform politically.

You mentioned earlier the situation in Chicago. In the Chicago area, we have the second largest concentration of Federal employees outside of Washington, due to the great number of regional offices. Now, given the history of politics in our area, you can just imagine the pressure for appointments, promotions, assignments, and then even adjustments of Federal decisions.

If the political pressure that is historically existing in Cook County, were brought to bear within the Federal Establishment, as it is, the Federal employees are above that kind of pressure, and I think that given that protection of the present Hatch Act, I think it has led to insure the kind of honest administration of the Federal Government that people have come to expect.

Senator PERCY. Finally, it is a matter of public record that under the Nixon administration certain White House personnel engaged in practices which really applied political coersion to Federal employees. They exploited the weaknesses of the civil service system.

They had reluctant employees transferred to undesirable positions. They applied pressure through the appointive service, and so on. I have no question that this was done, and has been done in previous administrations under both Democrats and Republicans.

Would it be desirable, rather than just retain the Hatch Act, to really go about reforming the civil service system itself? You have suggested one basic reform already.

Do you think this committee ought to have its new jurisdiction, unsought and unlooked for, but imposed on us by the Reform Committee? Now that we have that responsibility, we want to measure up to it.

Should we take a look at basic reforms that should take place in the civil service system, and undertake a study of that?

Representative DERWINSKI. I think the timing would be excellent. You have three new Civil Service Commissioners. They come in, not so much new to the field, but new to their assignments, and it gives them a chance to shake up the bureaucracy in the civil service itself. It gives them a chance to bring fresh ideas to the administration. I think we would be performing a service for this President, as well as future Presidents, if we would liberalize the area of political appointment, and permit additional political appointments that could be made, and remove the kind of temptation that was inherent in the abuse you noted in previous administrations.

Senator PERCY. I want to thank you very much indeed for being with us, Congressman Derwinski.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate very much your thoughtfulness, and I apologize for the overlapping, there is simply no way we can eliminate this overlapping this morning, and the Permanent Investigation Subcommittee and this committee are having meetings.

Senator SASSER. Thank you for being here this morning, Senator Percy.

Congressman, I want to thank you for appearing here, and I have just a few very brief questions that I would like to direct to you.

You referred a moment ago to polls that have been run by your colleagues in the House, with regard to whether or not Federal employees did indeed wish a reform of the Hatch Act.

How were these polls run?

Representative DERWINSKI. These were the standard questionnaires of Members of the House have used.

Senator SASSER. So these were questionnaires, I assume, which appear on newsletter heads?

Representative DERWINSKI. Yes.

Senator SASSER. So we are not dealing here with a scientific indepth door to door poll, I assume?

Representative DERWINSKI. No, I think the assumption in the two cases I mentioned was representing districts heavily impacted by Federal employees, the responses to the questions of retaining the Hatch Act, was considered significant.

Senator SASSER. Let me say we certainly have an area of agreement, when you indicate that you think that there should be more schedule C positions, and that there should be more policymaking positions, which perhaps should change with administrations. I believe that civil servants, or public servants in these positions, should be more responsive to the policymaking of the new administration.

This would hold whether it be Democratic or Republican.

I think that is a matter which is of some concern to many of us here in the Senate.

We need individuals who are responsive and sympathetic with administration policy, whether it be Republican or from the Demo