Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton: You were one of eight former political leaders at [Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)] who signed a letter objecting to the proposed OPM rule establishing the policy career schedule for civil servants. Tell me what motivated you to get engaged in that or what motivated all of you to sign that letter.
Bob Perciasepe: Well, I think it’s important to note that the letter we sent, of course, we’re a subset of everybody, we were folks from the Environmental Protection Agency, but it’s a bipartisan group of former political appointees who go into the federal government having to run an agency. And what we recognize, what we rely on in the career civil service, is unbiased, apolitical, clear advice on how to get things done. There’s a wealth of historical information, experience that they have — hundreds of years of experience. And so we want to be able to rely on them. And we’re worried deeply, from our own experiences — again, bipartisan, both Republican and Democrat — having to rely on trusting the advice we’re getting and not feeling like they’re afraid to say anything to us, particularly when it comes to scientific and technical facts. It’s hard to function in technical agencies and get things done if you can’t trust the advice you’re getting, or if you are putting pressure on people in a way that they won’t give you the advice you need to hear.
Terry Gerton: So is that the main argument that you want to make in the letter, that especially in organizations like the EPA, where scientific advice is core, that the provisions in the rule may make that impossible?
Bob Perciasepe: It’ll make it very difficult, and it’ll make us suspect. That’s the key. All of us recognize the importance of a civil service — a competent and well-educated and ready-to-go, prepared civil service. But this kind of classification, which would remove civil service protections, both procedural and appeal, will deaden, I think, the candidness of the kind of advice you need to hear. And people would be reticent to come forward with something that seems to contradict what a political appointee wants to accomplish, and maybe be reticent to give them advice on how they might accomplish what they want to do in a different way. And that is the key, because we all want to accomplish things when we’re a political appointee in an agency. But what we want to do is do it in a way that’ll work. And so that is the key here. A lot of people come in with pre-assumed assumptions or pre-baked assumptions on how they can get something done. And when they get in there, in the real world of running a federal government, they find nuances in how to get things done. If people are afraid to tell you that because they think they might get fired or relegated to some other non-functional activity, I think you’re really putting a service to how to get things done.
Terry Gerton: Just because the advice may be frustrating doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.
Bob Perciasepe: That’s correct. And I have to tell you, my own experience is there’s always a way to figure out how to get something done in the zone that you want to do — unless it’s illegal or unconstitutional. And if you want to go down that route, you at least should know that’s where you’re going. Because if you try to do things that are unconstitutional, you can propose them, you could put the policies out there. Eventually the courts will send it back, and you’ve got nothing accomplished in terms of whatever goal you had that you set out to achieve. So the key is how do you achieve the goal, and how do you achieve the goal in a constitutional, legal and appropriate way that’ll stick.
Terry Gerton: I’m speaking with Bob Perciasepe. He served as the deputy administrator and acting administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration. So Bob, the group that signed this letter is all from EPA or former employees from EPA. Is there something about EPA that makes it unique in these sorts of considerations?
Bob Perciasepe: Well, certainly in terms of the overall federal workforce, it’s a very tiny amount. I think there’s almost 3 million people working in the federal government — civilian employees — and half of them are in the defense agencies. And so EPA is like 15 or 16 thousand employees, pretty small. But it is a highly technical agency. It has engineers, it has scientists, it has legal expertise. It is that intersection of science and the law and engineering that is required to enable, implement the policies that Congress has enacted through the various laws like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.
Terry Gerton: And it’s also a regulatory agency.
Bob Perciasepe: That’s correct. Again, it’s a regulatory agency implementing the laws that Congress passed. It has no other authority to implement things on its own. It has to implement laws that Congress passed. So therefore the regulations have to be adhering to the laws Congress passed. They can’t just be something out of left field — or right field, if I want to be balanced there. So I think that it’s important that they’re grounded in the law and then in the science. And that is where the advice is needed. Again, there’s usually a way to work to get to most of what you want to accomplish as an appointed policy person. But you need to rely on that opinion.
Terry Gerton: One of the points that you make in the letter is a specific concern that the rules under schedule policy and career could impact government scientific integrity. Tell me more about what you mean by that.
Bob Perciasepe: Well, it’s probably — at least for an agency like EPA, but you can consider the Food and Drug Administration or the other health agencies, even the Department of Defense in terms of how weapons are operated, etc. — you need to know that the person who’s giving you the advice, it may be difficult for them to tell you something that you may not want to hear exactly the way they’re hearing it. If they feel like you could perceive that as resisting and therefore be dismissed with no appeal — and that’s draconian here — I mean that really is going to put a damper, no matter what the proposal says about how it won’t. I can tell you that it will.
Terry Gerton: I just want to put a pin in it. What does that mean in terms of the application of environmental regulations or laws or compliance? What would the impact of it be?
Bob Perciasepe: Well, people and the environment could be in danger, because you are told that this is what the effect — the health effect — might be of a chemical, let’s say, or this is how an engineering process will work to put this kind of pollution control on, and you don’t want to hear it. It’s not aligning with what you think should be done, and you’re not hearing what the advice is you’re getting. You could end up setting a standard — in the most fundamental experience here — setting a standard that is not protective of public health or the environment. And that would be a pretty important negative outcome from a regulatory program perspective.
Terry Gerton: So what do you and the other letter writers recommend instead of the rule, or to make the rule more effective?
Bob Perciasepe: The problem here is they’re making these assumptions that there’s significant poor performance in the federal government. Of course, they present no evidence of that. There is poor performance in every large organization. And the federal government is not the largest employer in the United States. Every large employer — or small employer — is going to have some employees who have to have their performance improved. There are procedures to do that, there are techniques to do that, and those can be invested in. If they’re not working to the full extent that people would like them to work, then invest in those things. Invest in management training, invest in all these other techniques and approaches to improve performance. When I was at EPA, and I’ve watched it through the years, different rules have been redone many different times, depending on what the new administration thinks they want to accomplish. Things like where does the Clean Water Act apply itself — the so-called Waters of the United States — that rule has been rewritten almost in every administration for the last 20 years. And every time, the career civil service figures out how can we write it in a way that will achieve the goals that those political appointees want to achieve. And they’ve been able to do it.
Terry Gerton: Improving performance standards, management training — anything else that’s particularly a recommendation here?
Bob Perciasepe: Well, particularly with the Senior Executive Service, which is at the highest level, and there’s about 8,000 SES employees in the federal government, and this rule is estimated to affect about 50,000 employees. So you see it’s going to go even further. But in most of those cases, if an employee really can’t help you solve a problem you’re trying to solve, you can transfer that employee to another job — particularly with the Senior Executive Service, which is the most policy-influential group in the federal government and the people with the most experience in getting things done. That’s how they got to where they are. They can be transferred and let them do some other job and get somebody else in that has more creative ideas and has solved the problem you want. There’s opportunities to move people around, as well as improve the amount of training and support that they have to get their job done.
Terry Gerton: Bob, we’ll see what happens. They extended the window for comments, and I know your group’s in there, as are some others from some of the other federal agencies, so we’ll see what happens. Thank you for sharing your insights, especially around scientific integrity, with us today.
Bob Perciasepe: Well, thanks for having me in the conversation.
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