For the first time, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the federal
agency that is supposed to protect whistleblowers and enforce merit
rules in the federal civil service, is declining to identify the number
of cases where it obtained a favorable outcome.  Consequently, it
is impossible to tell if anyone is being helped by the agency,
according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which is calling attention to the discrepancy in the agency’s latest report that was filed last week.

Ironically, the OSC report for Fiscal Year 2005 was compiled pursuant
to the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 but it omits the
key measure of its results.  The stated rationale for this
omission is also puzzling:

    “In order to avoid presupposition of the existence
of violations, and to eliminate the possibility of   
 creating bias toward prosecuting non-meritorious cases,
quantified goals concerning Favorable     Actions are
not used.”

“This is like a district attorney refusing to say what his conviction
rate is for fear of creating bias against criminals,” stated PEER
Executive Director Jeff Ruch, whose organization has been critical of
the track record of the Bush-appointed Special Counsel Scott
Bloch.  “Amazingly, Bloch’s 77-page report on his results in the
previous year contains almost zero substantive information about what
he accomplished.”

Prior OSC reports listed the number of favorable actions, such as
re-instatement or reversal of a disciplinary action, including the
percentage obtained in whistleblower cases.  The numbers of
favorable outcomes for complainants, however, showed a dramatic
drop-off under Bloch during his first year and are not reported at all
in the latest report covering Bloch’s second year in office:

“Given his disastrous trend, no wonder Scott Bloch wants to stop
releasing actual numbers,” Ruch added, pointing to record numbers of
federal employees who are blowing the whistle since George W. Bush
became president but with diminishing results produced by the Office of
Special Counsel in these cases.

Bloch has also stopped reporting numbers for successful mediation
outcomes.  Last year, Bloch forced the head of the highly-regarded
Mediation Unit to resign to avoid a forced relocation to an office in
Detroit that Bloch attempted to create.  The Detroit office fiasco
is just one of several Bloch missteps that are part of a retaliation
complaint filed by remaining OSC employees against Bloch.

The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (also known as GPRA)
was a Newt Gingrich-era “reform” that was supposed to hold “federal
agency agencies accountable for achieving program results,” according
to its preamble.  In reality, the annual reports have become
meaningless paper exercises that are rarely used in the shrinking
number of Congressional oversight hearings.

“As Scott Bloch has proven, an agency can file a tuna sandwich as its GPRA report and nothing will happen,” Ruch concluded.

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