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Dems say DHS is Swiss cheese; DHS says it’s Parm |
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By Jonathan E. Kaplan
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Posted: 11/02/07 09:54 PM [ET] |
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) is criticizing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for having too many vacancies at its highest levels, arguing the new agency has more holes than Swiss cheese.
Thompson charges the vacancies, which have been linked to reports that DHS employees are among the unhappiest in the federal workforce, affect the agency’s effectiveness and could affect national security.
“The number of acting [officials], contractors and vacancies makes us vulnerable,” Thompson said on Thursday. “That and the morale says something is not going well.”
Then-DHS Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson, whose resignation became effective last week, defended DHS to Thompson by insisting it resembles the “king of cheeses,” Parmigiano Reggiano.
“DHS’s leadership team would more fairly be compared to a fully intact wheel of the undisputed king of cheeses, Parmigiano Reggiano, carefully nurtured to maturity and ripe for superlative service,” Jackson told Thompson in a letter earlier this month. “The number of unencumbered positions … is virtually nil.”
The cheese metaphors are at the heart of a serious dispute between House Democrats and the administration.
DHS has undergone a somewhat difficult transition since its creation four years ago in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. This involved reorganizing more than 170,000 federal employees from 22 separate agencies into a single department charged with enforcing immigration laws, organizing emergency response to natural disasters, protecting airports and performing security missions to protect Americans at home.
Since its creation, the department has had its share of difficulties, including scathing performance reviews in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In a report last year, the Office of Personnel Management found that DHS employees had the lowest morale in the federal workforce. Of the 36 agencies surveyed, Homeland Security employees rated their agency last in job satisfaction and last on results-oriented performance.
“We continue to work on all of the issues that the deputy secretary had championed, and his efforts will continue,” DHS spokeswoman Laura Keehner said.
Thompson has been pressuring the agency with oversight hearings. In a September letter to Jackson, he accused DHS of having “more holes than Swiss cheese” because it has too many vacancies at senior levels. Based on the data provided by DHS, Thompson noted the agency had a 16 percent vacancy rate (609 of 722 jobs are filled).
Moreover, Thompson accused Jackson of cleverly accounting for filled positions by double-counting officials who hold one job but were appointed to fill another job as well.
“Logic tells me when one person holds two separate and distinct full-time jobs, neither job is ‘filled,’ ” Thompson wrote. “While [DHS] may call these positions ‘filled,’ I can only consider them ‘temporarily occupied.’ ”
Jackson responded in an Oct. 19 letter that while 113 of the 722 posts are not filled, DHS has hired 36 individuals who are merely waiting to get their security clearances before starting work. When those hires join DHS, 89 percent of the 722 jobs will have been filled.
In addition, Jackson noted that DHS is recruiting to fill 73 positions that were created last March. The four remaining positions are “reserves” and not counted toward the vacancy rate.
“We have actually made tremendous progress,” Jackson wrote.
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