Comment Number: OL-10506558
Received: 3/11/2005 7:41:04 PM
Subject: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment
Title: National Security Personnel System
CFR Citation: 5 CFR Chapter XCIX and Part 9901
No Attachments

Comments:

The proposed National Security Personnel System (NSPS) regulations issued by the Department of Defense (the Department) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) are deeply disturbing to me as a Department employee. I believe that these proposed regulations exceed the authority Congress granted in the NSPS statute in the following ways. The proposed NSPS regulation 9901.807(k)(8)(iii) denies employees their right to a fair hearing of their appeals for adverse actions taken against them by the Department. In this proposal, the Department reserves for itself the right to unilaterally reverse the decision of an MSPB Administrative Judge (AJ), merely because the Department does not agree that the decision was correct. This is the equivalent of the prosecution being able to tell a courtroom judge that the decision just rendered is not what the prosecution wanted, so the prosecution will overturn the judge’s decision! DoD and OPM should scrap their harmful proposals for NSPS and work collaboratively with employee unions to develop a new system, as Congress directed them to do!