Hatched for E-mailing
A government employee has been charged with violating the law limiting political activity in the federal workplace after he sent politically oriented e-mails while on the job.
The Office of Special Counsel, the independent agency charged with enforcing the 1939 Hatch Act, filed a complaint in August with the Merit Systems Protection Board alleging that Navy employee Rocky Morrill violated the law when he sent an e-mail to more than 300 people inviting them to a Halloween party for Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa.
The invitation attached to the e-mail encouraged the recipients, all federal employees, to attend the party and meet Holden who at the time was seeking re-election to Pennsylvania's 17th Congressional District.
The OSC holds that Morrill violated the Hatch Act in sending the e-mail from his job at the Naval Inventory Control Point in Mechanicsburg, Pa.
In April, an MSPB judge ruled on two Hatch Act cases, holding that sending politically charged e-mails to co-workers on government computer systems did not violate the Hatch Act because it is akin to "water cooler" discussions.
The OSC is appealing that decision, which involved two incidences of forwarding an e-mail to no more than 50 people in the Social Security Administration's Kansas City regional office.
This more recent case differs in that Morrill's e-mail was sent to 300 federal employees.
A year ago, the OSC filed charges against employees at the Air Force and the Environmental Protection Agency for similar violations of the Hatch Act involving sending political e-mails while working.
A second complaint filed with the MSPB by the OSC in August involved Agriculture Department employee Dr. Nayland Collier, who is alleged to have violated the Hatch Act by sending a letter as the chairman of a re-election committee for a country commissioner in North Carolina.
Collier is supposed to have identified himself as the sender of a letter that went to about 144 people seeking political donations for Lewis C. Hoggard III for commissioner of Bertie County, N.C. According to the OSC, he identified himself as the sender by either attending a reception or sending a check in an enclosed envelope, despite the fact that Hoggard was identified as the letter's sender.
Collier is a supervisory veterinary medical officer at Agriculture's Food and Safety and Inspection Service.
Collier and Morrill face disciplinary action pending a MSPB hearing and the presumed penalty is dismissal from federal employment, but that could be dropped to a 30-day suspension if the board unanimously votes to do so. All decisions can be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
"We will continue to prosecute this important law when partisanship is injected improperly into the federal workplace," said Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch in a statement.
The OSC has been accused in a complaint of allowing politics to influence its enforcement of higher profile Hatch Act cases, but the complaint acknowledged that the agency has taken up lesser complaints such as the political e-mails without regard to political affiliation.
COMMENTS
- It's time to throw the Hatch Act overboard! Why, just look at the major political scandals involving government employees. It's not the GS folks making a few calls or e-mails, but the political appointees who disgrace this great nations's civil service system. President 'Shrub' is trying his best to gut the civil service system, which historically was created to minimize or eliminate political pandering and special interest groups. Besides, telephones, fax machines, copiers, and e-mail are all just means of communication, nothing more, nothing less. The Hatch Act is a dinosaur from another time, and should be replaced with a strong, positive act PROTECTING government civil service employees, not further limiting their rights. GovExec.com reader Posted September 11, 2005 10:11 AM
