US federal personnel chief quits after seven months
The White House has appointed a new head of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) following the resignation of previous chief Jeff Pon, who took up the post in March but quit last week.
Margaret Weichert will take on the role as acting director of the OPM, in addition to her current job as deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the White House said in a brief statement.
Pon’s resignation last Friday has not been explained by either the White House or the OPM, whose spokesman told the govexec.com website that it had been a surprise.
Pon had been confirmed in the role in March, leaving his post as chief human resources and strategy officer at the Society for Human Resources Management.
Down the Pon
He had been in charge of president Donald Trump’s civil service reforms, attempting to implement his executive orders to make it easier to fire federal employees and limit the power of the unions. These orders were invalidated by a judge in August, though Trump’s administration is now appealing the ruling.
The departure of Pon has raised questions about the future of the OPM agency, according to federal employee news site fedweek.com. Weichert had been the primary driver of a plan to break off the agency’s operating parts and put remaining policy functions under the direct control of the White House, it noted.
The most commonly cited reason for Pon’s resignation is that he had been under pressure for not being sufficiently supportive of the administration’s plan for OPM, which was part of a wide-ranging government reorganisation proposed in June, it said.
New face, new challenges
“Margaret has my full trust and support, and I know she will hit the ground running to ensure the federal workforce has the right skills and tools to deliver the proper services to the American people,” OMB director Mick Mulvaney said, according to govexec.com.
Meanwhile, Republican members of the House and Senate have proposed a settlement that would increase federal employee pay by 1.9%, in direct contradiction of Trump’s stated intent to freeze federal employee pay in 2019.
The agreement comes after the Senate and House versions of the general government appropriations bills initially conflicted on federal pay, according to FederalTimes.com.
About Catherine Early
Catherine is a journalist and editor specialising in government policy and regulation. She writes predominantly about environmental issues and has held permanent roles at the Environmentalist (now known as Transform), the ENDS Report, Planning magazine and Windpower Monthly, and has also written for the Guardian, the Ecologist and China Dialogue. She was a finalist in the Guardian’s International Development Journalism competition 2009, and was part of the team that won PPA Business Magazine of the Year 2011 for Windpower Monthly. She also won an outstanding content award at Haymarket Media Group’s employee awards for data-led stories in Planning magazine. She holds a 2:1 honours degree in English language and literature from Birmingham University.
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