“Let me give you the honest truth,” an employee of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service told the Washington Examiner‘s Luke Rosiak nearly a year ago. “A lot of FMCS employees don’t do a hell of a lot, including myself. Personally, the reason that I’ve stayed is that I just don’t feel like working that hard, plus the location on K Street is great, plus we all have these oversized offices with windows, plus management doesn’t seem to care if we stay out at lunch a long time. Can you blame me?”
Indeed, we cannot blame him. Nor could any American making less than the $110,000 average salary of this obscure agency’s 230 employees.
If you have never heard of FMCS, that is because it does very little with its $50 million annual budget. Its ostensible purpose is to provide voluntary arbitration services in labor disputes, but as the quotation above suggests, it doesn’t even do much of that.
Rosiak was put on to this grotesque government gravy train by allegations of grave misconduct among its leadership. His series, which began last fall, precipitated the resignation of the former FMCS director, George Cohen, and drew the attention of Congress. An inspector general investigation subsequently began.
But last month, the agency’s top brass — including Allison Beck, the former AFL-CIO attorney whom President Obama recently nominated to replace the former director — stopped cooperating with investigators, who have since referred the matter to the Department of Justice.
Rosiak’s stories about FMCS reinforce every negative stereotype one could imagine of the federal bureaucracy — including many that are deeply unfair to most federal employees. For example, FMCS paid $85,000 to the possibly non-existent company of a recently retired employee, and no one at the agency could explain what services the money had gone toward. Its managers exchanged emails about how to circumvent federal contracting regulations. They allegedly violated federal hiring practices to create jobs for family and friends. They even used agency money to purchase artwork produced by the wife of the former director and to rent storage spaces near their homes.
They also spent obscene amounts of taxpayers’ money on personal luxuries. One leased a $53,000 take-home car with taxpayer funds, in apparent violation of federal regulations. Others billed the government for personal cell phone use. They purchased ludicrously expensive office furniture, including flatscreen televisions and a stereo that have since gone missing. FMCS also purchased 28 LCD projectors for as much as $9,500 each — one for every eight employees.
Employees who questioned the frivolous spending suffered retaliation, layoffs and harassment.
When Congress returns, it should not just block Beck’s appointment — it should make a point of abolishing this agency (and fumigating its offices, if possible) while prosecutors decide whether any criminal prosecutions are appropriate. Taxpayers cannot afford this kind of outrageous behavior, nor can the broader reputation of honest federal employee.
