An unusual presidential memorandum may signal President Obama is having second thoughts about the former union lawyer he nominated to lead the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
The White House published a “succession plan” for the agency on Oct. 17, 2014, directing that, should FMCS be without a permanent director, as it is now, the senior deputy director should serve as acting director.
Less than a month prior to that, however, the president nominated the junior deputy, Allison Beck, to lead the agency, at which point she became acting director.
Then it came to light that just days before her nomination was announced, an independent inspector general had referred Beck to the Department of Justice for alleged contracting and civil service violations.
John Arnold, an FMCS spokesman, refused to tell the Washington Examiner who is now managing the agency. He also declined to say how, if Beck remains in command, that conforms with the presidential plan.
If the Obama administration lacks confidence in Beck as an acting director, it raises the question of whether she has the president’s confidence to run FMCS permanently.
An Obama White House spokesman declined to say if Beck’s nomination would be withdrawn. No confirmation hearing date has been set and her nomination would likely be a hard-sell to an incoming Republican Senate majority.
Former FMCS director George Cohen resigned after an Examiner series exposed multiple spending, management and personnel abuses, including Cohen using tax dollars to buy artwork created by his wife.
Beck became acting director when Obama announced his intent on Sept. 18, 2014, to nominate her for the permanent position, which must be confirmed by the Senate.
But the Examiner reported that FMCS managers had hired an independent inspector general to sort out complaints brought by a whistleblower, then fired the IG and shut down the investigation when he asked the agency for records detailing Beck’s alleged misconduct a week before her nomination came through.
The senior deputy, Scot Beckenbaugh, had been the presumed nominee, but Beck touted her political connections as a former lawyer for the AFL-CIO and told agency colleagues her union allies would exert pressure on the White House to secure the nomination for her, according to evidence gathered by the IG.
FMCS is a 230-person agency with a $50 million budget that provides non-binding, voluntary mediation services when unions are considering going on strike against private employers.
The agency’s obscurity and the fact that its top person reports only to the president long ago rendered it virtually without oversight.
The White House memo, “Providing an Order of Succession Within the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service,” said that if the organization is without a director, the “Deputy Director, Mediation Services and Field Programs” — Beckenbaugh’s long-held role — should become its director.
The memo added the caveat that “notwithstanding the provisions of this memorandum, the president retains discretion, to the extent permitted by law, to depart from this memorandum in designating an acting director.”
The agency’s website still lists Beck as acting director.
Beck’s secretary is her sister-in-law, for whom FMCS sought a high-level political appointment.
In an interview under oath with the IG, a former senior employee said that Beck also sought to hire family friends for highly paid jobs with few duties by manipulating political appointments and civil service hiring rules.
Emails obtained by the Examiner showed Beck disregarded contracting rules to steer contracts to friends.
FMCS employees have frequently paid for goods and services from vendors using purchase cards rather than going through the required process of soliciting competitive bids.
Besides Beck, there are few internal candidates in the succession plan that have not been implicated in the investigations by the IG, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee or the Examiner.
Beckenbaugh caused the agency to pay him room and board for five years on top of his $174,000 salary. He also pays taxes in Iowa instead of D.C., where he now lives.
The director of mediation services, who ranks lower on the succession plan, convinced FMCS managers to allow her to live in Pennsylvania even though it meant the agency had to pay her hotel bills in D.C. for up to two weeks out of every month.
A former union president and mail carrier, she allegedly kept the agency from hiring veterans, who it is obligated to give preference to, because she feared they were too unwilling to bend rules.
The former director of mediation services, who could also be eligible under the plan, returned to FMCS in a lower-ranking role after a plagiarism scandal while he was a law professor, and recommended that FMCS kill the investigation of Beck.
