See today's Federal Page in The Washington Post (Monday, Nov. 7 page A15) where Christopher Lee collects comments from top government and union officials on NSPS.  The issue:  will managers slant annual evaluations to reward favored workers under the proposed pay for performance standards at DOD and DHS?  Answers from:  Clay Johnson III, OMB, David Walker, GAO, Joh Gage, AFGE, and Colleen Kelley, National Treasury Employees Union.

In the wake of the disaster of Michael Brown as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, another nominee to high-level government position is justifiably drawing fire as a potential “crony” appointment.

She is Ellen Sauerbrey, nominated to be undersecretary of state for population, refugees and migration, which manages a $700 million budget.

She was a two-time losing GOP candidate for governor of Maryland and ran the president's campaign there in 2000. But she has no experience managing humanitarian crises or the plight of refugees, which is what the job requires. The post usually goes to an expert rather than a political appointee.

In addition, as the Bush appointee as U.S. envoy to the United Nations on women's issues, she has been hostile to woman's rights, family planning and child and material health, according to 12 organizations that oppose her selection.

Surely, the president can do better.

Following the advice in one of the memos I
received in the email today concerning the NSPS Regulations about to be
published I decided to learn as much as I could about the new system.
In general I think it is excellent advice for all future NSPS employees
to be conversant with the regulations because their future is to be
determined by the intricate, well crafted phrases of the NSPS
Regulations.

My first choice of research topic was the use of implementing issuances to void previous collectively bargained agreements.

Rosemary Collyer, judge for the U.S. Distict Court for the District
of Columbia, in a recent case brought before her court decided that
using implementing issuances to void collectively bargained agreements
was illegal in the new personnel system for the DHS.

Perhaps since the NSPS and the DHS are two different personnel
systems federal law is not equally applicable. It would still seem that
a judicial decision from a federal court would be at least worthy of
collaborative consideration for the NSPS.

Though the employees of both agencies are federal employees it
would appear, at least in the view of some, that the same federal laws
do not apply equally.

Further heeding the advice of today's email I decided to learn more
about NSPS Law which authorized the NSPS. Perhaps the answer to my
question would be there. The NSPS Law authorizing the establishment of
the NSPS is conveniently located on the NSPS website. It deserves our
attention since it is supposed to be the source of the NSPS
Regulations.

I did a search on implementing issuances in the NSPS Law. I
discovered that the phrase was not there. I then scanned the entire law
to find that it was neither specifically authorized nor prohibited.

Unable to determine the origin of implementing issuances from the
NSPS Law I proceeded to look for clarification on collectively
bargained agreements.

I found an interesting segment which described collectively
bargained agreements. To my surprise the segment appeared to state that
collectively bargained agreements could be voided - by a subsequent
collectively bargained agreement.

The new collectively bargained agreement would then be binding on all parties including the Department of Defense.

At this point I realized I had reached the limit of my untrained
mind. My conclusions were not in congruence with the direction that
NSPS had taken. I must have missed a relevant point somewhere along the
line.

But the entire exercise of trying to answer a single question about
the new NSPS does fortify the importance of that very helpful comment I
received in today's emails from the various dignitaries of the DOD….

Learn all you can about the new system.