| Comment Number: | OL-10512133 |
| Received: | 3/16/2005 9:57:00 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:
To DoD HQS NSPS Regulatory Staff: I am a DoD employee with 25 years of service. Your proposed NSPS regs fail to address and especially fails to provide protections from management chain-of-command/supervisors who do and have used the security clearance alleged requirements (for having a clearance) and clearance denial/revocation processes as vehicles for veiled Agency management reprisal, e.g., for an employee's whistleblowing and for an employee's engaging in other activity protected by law (e.g., EEO & MSPB & CBA grievance-type filings; IG complaint-making; exercising 1st Amendment speech & lawsuit-filing rights, etc). I have personally experienced that kind of unlawful Agency mgmt reprisal and again am NOW so experiencing it. NSPS regs MUST be amended to provide strong due process and anti-reprisal provisions & punishment for chain-of-command mgmt staff who abuse the system in this manner, and use it to retaliate against employees they do not like/want, or use as a threat to gain favors (e.g., sex etc) from their targeted employee-victims. Finally, the proposed NSPS regs' attempts to water-down time-tested DUE PROCESS protections, in existing law pertaining to appeals to MSPB, and turn over substantially unchecked discretion to Agency management in such matters, is unacceptable and doubtless will NOT survive judicial attack. Likewise, the equally shameful UNchecked discretion your NSPS proposed regs allow Agency mgmt to have, with respect to employee's pay will doubtless put the US Govt back to the pre-President Garfield days, when favoritism & cronyism characterized the Federal civil service workforce, for here, your NSPS regs provide strong inducement for that kind of mgmt behavoir and provide no meaningfuly independent check of abuse of the pay-giving vast powers your NSPS proposed regs bestow on Agency mgmt. That is the same Agency mgmt who already, more often than not, in DoD/its components, (like Dept of Army, too), analogously hire WHO they know (buddies) and hire NOT on merit and via fair competition for positions / promotions. I suggest you scrap your proposed NSPS proposed regs/system and start over, this time via a JOINT cooperative venture WITH a broadly representative cross-section of DoD Agencies & other DoD-wide employees, and with their designated reps/unions, to avoid these kind of mgmt abuse-inducing & employee rights emasculating grave consequences. Otherwise, your as-proposed & clearly draconian NSPS will soon collapse, if implemented as propsed, (under Congressional oversight & Federal court guaranteed intense scrutiny), like a proverbial "house of cards". -----A VERY concerned long-time present DoD-DLA & former DA employee.