Good governance groups are urging Senate leaders of both parties to revive the now-defunct board that reviews whistleblower claims by filling vacancies that have left it without a quorum since 2017.
The Merit Systems Protection Board has been entirely vacant since 2019, leaving the board accruing a backlog of over 3,500 cases.
The board is viewed as a key protection of the civil service, reviewing cases of government employees that are challenging their termination, including those that have filed for whistleblower protection after flagging waste, fraud and abuse.
“We urge you to go beyond these abstract descriptions to consider the devastating impact on people’s livelihoods and careers, as well as the corrosive toll on the public interest and the public purse. Behind these cases are individuals and their families desperately seeking legal relief, often from reprisal like job termination and loss of income after they patriotically sought to expose governmental waste or wrongdoing at great personal and professional risk to themselves,” the groups wrote in a letter spearheaded by the American Civil Liberties Union and signed by 15 other groups.
The Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee has forwarded nominees to fill the board’s three slots. But the nominees have yet to advance to the floor for a vote by the full Senate.
Biden nominated two Democrats to the board earlier this year, filling out the trio of nominations in September with a Republican nominee —...
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