Senators fix their sights on OPM’s pay memo for political appointees 

A group of Democratic senators blasted recent Office of Personnel Management guidance that pointed to the “great flexibility” agencies have in offering salaries to some political appointees as a recruitment tool, calling for the acting director to detail which Trump administration may have received the maximum federal salaries as a result. 

Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va.; Mark Warner, D-Va.; Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md.; Alex Padilla, D-Calif.; John Fetterman, D-Pa.; Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; and Patty Murray, D-Wash. — vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee — lambasted the policy in a May 28 letter to acting OPM director Charles Ezell, calling it an “egregious abuse of taxpayer dollars and massively wasteful.”

Ezell penned the guidance in an April 10 memo that encouraged agencies to consider offering the maximum salary of $195,200 to attract Schedule C employees — appointees to confidential or policy roles outside of the competitive service — but also authorized removing agency human resources offices’ from their role in setting the terms for Schedule C appointment, such as onboarding and vetting political appointees.

“Such flexibility is important to attract highly-qualified Schedule C employees to serve in important confidential, policy-determining, policy-making and policy-advocating roles,” the memo said. “Well-qualified Schedule C employees are needed ‘to drive the unusually expansive and transformative agenda the American people elected President Trump to accomplish.’”

In the letter, the senators pilloried the policy, especially when considered alongside other directives OPM has authorized in collaboration with the Department of Government Efficiency to cull the civil service with various workforce cuts. 

“While this Administration pushes out scores of public servants and guts entire agencies, often in defiance of Congress and federal law, your memo encourages agencies to help install loyalists who have not been properly vetted, in critically important positions—and to pay them at the highest possible rate,” the letter said. “This would allow appointees to begin work in sensitive roles without any vetting, including for conflicts of interest or background checks, bypassing the basic guardrails that have been in place for decades. On its face, OPM’s April 10 memo demonstrates a desire for the expeditious hiring of underqualified and overpaid political elites.

“Schedule C hires are not career civil servants. They will not be answering phones at Social Security field offices or conducting food inspections or fighting wildfires. They do not work for the American people; they work to advance the political agenda of the President,” they added. “OPM’s April 10 memo makes clear the Trump Administration’s ultimate goal is to decimate the nonpolitical career civil service and use taxpayer dollars to enrich and reward political allies, all at the cost of the government services that people rely on.”

The senators called for Ezell provide them with salary information of all Schedule C appointees broken down by agency and job descriptions of those making $195,200, justification for revoking agency HR department authority to set the terms for Schedule C appointment, any OPM guidance to agencies as to how to set the terms for a Schedule C appointment in order to avoid widespread corruption, the agency-level cost of hiring the desired number of Schedule C appointees and written information detailing the role of the Presidential Personnel Office in hiring Schedule C appointees by June 4.