Trump’s salaries adviser quits over politicising order
The lifelong Republican appointed by Donald Trump to oversee federal civil service salaries has quit his post in protest at the US president’s new executive order that could remove employment protection rights for tens of thousands of federal employees.
In a resignation letter obtained by Politico, Federal Salary Council Chair Ron Sanders wrote that the order is an attempt “to replace apolitical expertise with political obeisance” and “make loyalty to him [Trump] the litmus test for many thousands of career civil servants”.
Sanders added that the order is “nothing than a smokescreen for what is clearly an attempt to require the political loyalty of those who advise the President, or failing that, to enable their removal with little if any due process.”
Noting that the US Constitution expects career civil servants to serve only “the public, and the laws that their elected representatives enact”, he wrote that “no President should be able to remove career civil servants whose only sin is that they may speak such a truth to him.”
No chicken
Sanders, who was appointed by Trump in 2017, has been responsible for advising the administration on civil service pay settlements.
His resignation follows Trump’s order, issued last week, which requires agencies to apply a new ‘Schedule F’ status to all civil servants involved in confidential or policy work. This would strip them of employment rights which protect appointment on merit and prevent their dismissal without proper process.
Detailed in a GGF article published on Monday, the reforms were called “the most profound undermining of the civil service in our lifetimes” by American Federation of Government Employees national president Everett Kelley.
About Matt Ross
Matt is Global Government Forum's Contributing Editor, providing direction and support on topics, products and audience interests across GGF’s editorial, events and research operations. He has been a journalist and editor since 1995, beginning in motoring and travel journalism – and combining the two in a 30-month, 30-country 4x4 expedition funded by magazine photo-journalism. Between 2002 and 2008 he was Features Editor of Haymarket news magazine Regeneration & Renewal, covering urban regeneration, economic growth and community development; and from 2008 to 2014 he was the Editor of UK magazine and website Civil Service World, then Editorial Director for Public Sector – both at political publishing house Dods. He has also worked as Director of Communications at think tank the Institute for Government.
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