by MSPB Watch
National Whistleblowers Center explains roots of divisions and setbacks in the federal whistleblower community
3:03 pm in Uncategorized by MSPB Watch
Key passage (emphasis mine):
On February 1, 2007, whistleblower organizations met together as the Make it Safe Coalition (MISC) and agreed that we would support only bills that were improvements on the current law and contained no backward steps for anyone. Those goals were almost met on January 28, 2009 when the House of Representatives voted for strong whistleblower rights, including full federal court access for all federal employees.
However, over the summer of 2009 things started to go wrong. In negotiations the NWC attended with representatives from the White House and Congress, it became clear that some in the Senate did not support full protection for federal employee whistleblowers. Additionally, the White House retreated from earlier pledges to support a strong federal employee whistleblower law, and instead explicitly stated in private meetings that they would oppose full court access and due process protections for national security employees.
Things took a further turn for the worse in August of 2009 when the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs “marked-up” and approved the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. At the committee meeting the Senate sponsors stated that their bill was the “best” whistleblowers could get, and the community needed to get behind it.
In response to the Senate Committee mark-up, the MISC Executive Committee endorsed the bill. However, the NWC saw a number of defects in the legislation that made it impossible for us to support passage of that version of the Senate bill. Instead, we became the “skunk at the picnic” and were placed in a very difficult position of having to publicly oppose that version of the bill.
