The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent letters this week to heads of various federal agencies questioning their apparent efforts to hire new federal employees to offset a proposed hiring freeze by the incoming Trump administration.
In the letter, Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) wrote, “Federal agencies are accelerating the hiring of civil service positions and compressing hiring timelines in anticipation of a possible hiring freeze in 2017, according to a recent news account.”
Chaffetz then noted that recent data from USAJobs.gov seem to support the report and said that “The accelerated hiring timelines create the appearance that some federal agencies are pushing to fill as many slots as possible without regard for identifying and hiring the most qualified applicants.”
Chaffetz also noted that more than half of the jobs available in the Washington, DC area are not available to outside applicants which “favors current federal employees at the expense of applicants from the public.”
Chaffetz is therefore requesting that the agencies provide data to be investigated by the Committee such as the number of job openings posted since November 9 and the number of documents submitted to the Office of Personnel Management relating to employee hiring.
The letter was sent to the following agencies:
- U.S. Department of Agriculture
- U.S. Department of Commerce
- U.S. Department of Defense
- U.S. Department of Education
- U.S. Department of Energy
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
- U.S. Department of Labor
- U.S. Department of State
- U.S. Department of the Interior
- U.S. Department of Treasury
- U.S. Department of Transportation
- U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- U.S. General Services Administration
- U.S. Small Business Administration
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security
- U.S. Department of Justice
- U.S. Office of Management and Budget
A copy of the letter is included below.
House Oversight Committee Letter to Agencies Re: Hiring Ahead of Trump Administration
