Lynch: OPM’s hiring plan includes ‘blatant loyalty test’

The top Democrat on the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Monday urged the Trump administration to rescind the ‘merit hiring plan’ it published last week, calling a provision mandating new essay questions quizzing most federal job applicants about their favorite Trump policies a “blatant loyalty test.”

“Such a loyalty test is antithetical to the concept of an expert, nonpartisan civil service and will only serve to degrade and politicize the services Americans need from their government,” wrote Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., the panel’s acting ranking member. “I urge you to remove this question from any potential application materials for those seeking to serve their country through federal jobs, and to provide documentation on how this ill-advised question as formulated and included in the memorandum."

Lynch’s outrage stems from last week’s release of the Office of Personnel Management’s new hiring plan. While the document continues to advance an array of bipartisan reforms to the federal government’s hiring process, including tenets of skills-based hiring, it also introduced new essay questions compulsory for federal applicants for all jobs at a GS-5 salary or above.

“How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role?” asks one of four essay questions that job seekers must answer if they are seeking any federal position GS-5 or above. “Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.”

Lynch blasted the new essay questions as yet another effort to politicize the federal workforce. Since returning to office, President Trump and his deputies have reinstated and renamed Schedule F, an initiative to strip tens of thousands of career employees in “policy-related” positions of their civil service protections, as well as encouraged agencies to fill more executive level jobs with political appointees rather than career members of the Senior Executive Service.

“Every federal worker is legally required to take an oath of office that they will ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,’” Lynch wrote. “The oath does not require federal workers to swear to protect and defend executive orders or policy initiatives. It does not require that workers have loyalty to a president or to a political party.”

Jacque Simon, public policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees, also criticized the new essay questions in a statement last week.

“The requirement for candidates to answer how they’d advance President Trump’s EOs and policy priorities and to pick their favorite Trump EO is a glaring violation of merit principles and seems practically Maoist,” she said. “Glorification of a political leader cannot be a prerequisite for obtaining a federal job. Even at its most benign, requiring candidates to muse positively about Donald Trump’s EOs and policies is contrary to everything the apolitical civil service stands for.”