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That's what the Office of Personnel Management wants to know. The agency has sent a memo to agency chief human capital officers telling them to provide lists of of their politically appointed positions. The lists then will be passed on to the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees. The agency is required to collect and transmit the information under the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act.

Specifically, OPM wants agencies to list:

• All positions that are appointed by the president, including the title and description of the duties of each position.
• The names of the people holding these positions.
• Any vacancies in the positions, and how long they've been vacant.
• The date after the election on which an appointment to each position must be made to ensure effective operation of the government.

If you haven't already seen it, I wanted to call your attention to our new guide to the ongoing drama surrounding Office of Special Counsel chief Scott Bloch and the various Bush administration officials he's investigated -- all while under investigation himself the whole time. If you're having as much trouble as I am keeping track of this web of still-developing controversies, it's a handy tool.

Under a 1999 law, the head of the Patent and Trademark Office has the authority to appoint administrative judges to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences. And PTO chiefs have done so 46 times since the law was passed.

There's just one problem, the New York Times reports today: Apparently, the law granting the authority is unconstitutional. That's what John F. Duffy, a professor at the George Washington University Law School, discovered and described in a recent paper.

At issue is Article II of the Constitution, which gives the president the power to appoint ambassadors, Supreme Court judges and certain other public officials, and says that in regard to additional federal positions, "Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments."

The PTO chief, of course, doesn't head a department. He's an undersecretary of Commerce. One could argue that patent administrative judges aren't the kind of "inferior officers" that the Constitution envisioned, but apparently the Supreme Court has made it pretty clear in previous decisions that they are. Even the Justice Department isn't challenging Duffy's interpretation. And that means that thousands of decisions involving patents stretching back several years could be in question.

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

In Lurita Doan's Federal News Radio appearance this morning, she didn't just give the details about her firing. Asked if she had any regrets about her tenure, she offered up this gem, which really must be heard to be appreciated, because it features an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation: Doan's Regret

In an appearance on Federal News Radio this morning, ex-GSA Administrator Lurita Doan provided some more details on her firing earlier this week, and her reaction to it.

Tuesday evening, Doan said, she was summoned to her first-ever meeting at the White House, with Bush's chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, and White House Counsel Fred Fielding. Here's how she described it:

Less than 30 seconds into the meeting, I was told the White House was requesting my resignation. I tell you, it was humbling and frankly, it was bizarre. Naturally, I immediately stated, "I serve at the pleasure of the president," and I immediately gave my resignation.

I was surprised to be told that from the White House point of view, I was considered, and this is a direct quote, a "distraction to progress at GSA." I know I have had a high profile, and I know I've taken very public, very vocal stands on a lot of very contentious issues. You know, I've been a tiger on procurement, of course, I love talking about telework, my passion is talking about expanding and working on expanding our ports of entry and making opportunities for small business. But I saw that as my job.

I have to say, I don't think this was about Doan's position on telework. And it's pretty clear at this point it wasn't about allegations she violated the Hatch Act more than a year ago. But that didn't stop the New York Times editorial page from pushing that notion in today's edition.

Stay tuned to GovernmentExecutive.com Monday for a full interview with Doan.

The old labor-management partnership councils at federal agencies created under the Clinton adminstration are ghosts of their former selves since President Bush dissolved them in 2001. But now the one at the Environmental Protection Agency is officially out of business, the Washington Post reports today. Unionized scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency have severed their official relationship with management, citing concerns that leaders are failing to follow "principles of scientific integrity."

"It's gotten worse than ever in terms of the agency just doing unilateral decision-making," said J. William Hirzy, executive vice president of Chapter 280 of the National Treasury Employees Union and a senior scientist in EPA's risk assessment division. "We're tired of it."

White House counsel Fred Fielding has sent a memo to agencies urging them to provide Hatch Act briefings to all of their employees by the end of the year, IEC Journal reports.

"The 2008 election cycle will present many opportunities for federal employees to be involved in the political process," Fielding writes in the memo, "either through their own initiative or through outreach from campaigns." But agencies, he said, need to "ensure that those federal employees who choose to participate in political activity do so in accordance with the high ethical standards the president expects."

Fielding's office will be conducting its own set of Hatch Act briefings for White House staff. Judging from a whole series of events that have unfolded this year, that seems like a prudent idea.

The Campaign for America's Future wants Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Nancy Nord out of her job, arguing that she isn't sufficiently committed to getting more resources for the agency to step up inspections of toys for dangers like lead-based paint. And the organization has enlisted Barbie into its cause:

(Hat tip: Washington Post)

Embattled Minnesota U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose -- whose 20-month tenure was marked by sharp disagreements with her staff and the resignations of several top officials -- is on the way out. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Paulose announced yesterday that she will be returning to Washington to take a job at Justice Department headquarters.

Paulose had been caught up in this year's controversy over the Justice Department's handling of U.S. attorneys, largely because of her friendship with key Alberto Gonzales aide Monica Goodling. But the main problem seems to be that she couldn't win the support of career attorneys in her office.

The Washington Post quotes an anonymous source "familiar with the decision" as saying Paulose "has come to realize, and the new attorney general and others, that management was a challenge for her there. She felt it was best for her office for her to . . . get out of this management position and into a place where she could excel."

Still unclear is what will happen to the Office of Special Counsel investigation into allegations that Paulose mishandled classified information and retaliated against career employees who challenged her management style.

Thanks to Chris Dorobek of Federal Computer Week for linking to this Wall Street Journal piece I missed on Mitt Romney's management style. Romney was a consultant for 10 years, and it's pretty clear he'd bring that perspective to bear in running the executive branch.

Here's the key section of the article:

When asked for details about how he would reduce the size of government if elected, he mentions two things: The organizational chart of the executive branch, and consultants. "There's no corporation in America that would have a CEO, no COO, just a CEO, with 30 direct reports."

Running a government organized like this is, he explains, impossible. "So I would probably have super-cabinet secretaries, or at least some structure that McKinsey would guide me to put in place." He seems to catch a note of surprise in his audience, but he presses on: "I'm not kidding, I probably would bring in McKinsey. . . . I would consult with the best and the brightest minds, whether it's McKinsey, Bain, BCG or Jack Welch."

Dorobek also notes that after the Journal piece appeared, TIME columnist Michael Kinsley took some potshots at Romney, consultants and the whole concept of trying to introduce businesslike efficiency into government. "The notion that the cacophony of politics can be replaced with the smooth hum of expertise and that all the challenges our society faces can be solved by making the government run more efficiently has a long and generally laughable history," Kinsley wrote -- and a bipartisan one, too.

Here's just a sampling of headlines from today's Washington Post:

• State Dept. Won't Order Diplomats to Iraq
• TSA Minimizes Failure to Detect Threats
• FEMA Accused Of Wasting More Katrina Funding
• Justice Dept. Conducting Criminal Probe of Baghdad Embassy Contracts

This is a pretty typical day for the newspaper. Can there be any doubt at this stage that management of federal operations is not just something that's worthy of the next president's attention, but the critical issue facing the country in the next few years? If recent history has taught us anything, it's that we should be judging our candidates on the basis of how well they will manage the critical functions of the federal government, which are literally a matter of life and death to Americans. And we should be holding their feet to the fire when they make cavalier policy proposals like not replacing half of federal employees who retire and threatening to cut health benefits for political appointees.

While presidential candidates like to focus on policy proposals, and political reporters remain obsessed with the who's-up-who's-down horse race aspects of the campaign, the critically important issue is whether the next president will form an effective team of appointees, make sure agencies have the capacity to perform the roles they've been assigned, and hold federal managers and executives accountable for results. This issue ought to be central to the campaign, and its barely on the periphery.

John Edwards is still flogging his promise to cut off health care for members of Congress and senior administration officials if the legislative and executive branches fail to agree on a comprehensive health care reform bill within his first six months in office. In fact, Matt Yglesias notes, Edwards is even running ads in Iowa touting the idea.

This is a terrific rhetorical device, but if Edwards is even halfway serious about it, I hope he's going to think it through a little more. Say what you want about political appointees, but they already have enough incentives not to serve their country. Why add more in the form of uncertainty about benefits? Here's what would be truly political courageous: For one of Edwards' opponents to say, "I see your point, John, but getting the most highly qualified and talented people to run government's programs and operations is too important to play games with the basic benefits they might receive in exchange for agreeing to serve and to help lead the effort to make government as efficient and effective as possible."

Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell has issued her verdict on Robert O'Harrow's story about how the Air Force arranged a job through an intelligence contractor for Charles D. Riechers while he was awaiting confirmation as the service's top procurement official. After the story, which characterized Riechers' deal as a "no-work contract," appeared, he was later found dead of an apparent suicide.

The Air Force complained to Howell that the story was "highly misleading." Howell's conclusion: "There is nothing inaccurate in the story as a narrow slice of the contracting picture." But, she says, it "lacked important context -- whether such contracts are commonplace or unusual and what specific work Riechers did for [Assistant Air Force Secretary for Acquisition Sue C.] Payton under the contract."

As I've already noted, I think the Post's use of the term "no-work contract" to characterize the deal was unfortunate. Riechers, it seems clear, did in fact work -- just for the Air Force, not the company. The type of arrangement under which he worked, known as a "science, engineering and technical assistance" contract, is not uncommon in government. But, as Howell notes, procurement experts differ as to whether that makes it wise.

(Hat tip: IEC Journal.)

Did I read this story in The Hill correctly? I can't believe I did. Because it says that House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., has charged that DHS has so many vacancies in key positions that it resembles Swiss cheese. And that former DHS Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson actually wrote the following words to Thompson in a letter of response:

DHS’s leadership team would more fairly be compared to a fully intact wheel of the undisputed king of cheeses, Parmigiano Reggiano, carefully nurtured to maturity and ripe for superlative service. The number of unencumbered positions … is virtually nil.

The Washington Post reports the sad news today that Charles D. Riechers, 47, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisitions was found dead Sunday night in an apparent suicide. The Post had reported a couple of weeks ago that Riechers had received what the paper characterized as a "no-work contract" with a contractor while awaiting confirmation to his Air Force job.

I picked up on that "no-work" designation in an item I wrote about the Post story. But as a few of the commenters on that item noted, the shorthand expression doesn't really accurately characterize the arrangement under which Riechers was working.

As Sharon Weinberger of Danger Room pointed out yesterday, Riechers appeared to be employed under a "systems engineering and technical services contract," a very common type of arrangement in the Pentagon. And while such contracts are subject to abuse, Riechers' admission that he "didn't do anything" for the contractor doesn't mean that he wasn't working.

The New York Times reports today on the growing number of acting officials at the top of the Justice, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services departments -- and lots of other agencies.

This is one of those stories that tend to arise at this point in a president's term, when top folks start to head for the exits, and it becomes harder to find qualified, politically acceptable people willing to take jobs in an administration that's not going to be around much longer.

In 1998, for example, National Journal reported that senators (including then-Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., who is hoping to make a few appointments of his own starting in January 2009) were outraged that in President Clinton's second term, acting officials were holding down 20 per cent of Cabinet-level department jobs that were supposed to require Senate confirmation.

The Times says that "While exact comparisons are difficult to come by, researchers say that the vacancy rate for senior jobs in the executive branch is far higher at the end of the Bush administration than it was at the same point in the terms of Mr. Bush’s recent predecessors in the White House."

I was struck by one comment in the story by Paul Light, a professor at New York University, erstwhile Government Executive contributor, and longtime expert on the appointments process:

He said the problems of having so many acting senior government officials were obvious: “One of the things we know is that they just aren’t as effective as Senate-confirmed appointees. They just don’t have the standing in their agencies. Acting people are very shy about making decisions.”

On one level I'm sure this is true. Acting officials typically don't have the standing to launch major new initiatives. But in another way, at least some of them have more standing than your average political appointee. I'm talking here about those acting officials -- and there are many of them -- who have risen through the ranks and demonstrated both strong leadership and a good working knowledge of an agency's operations. Aren't such people often more respected by the people who report to them than an appointee who comes in from the outside without much government experience?

Here's a novel idea: The head of Disabled American Veterans thinks President Bush should name someone to head the Veterans Affairs Department who knows something about the agency's programs and how they work.

"It is absolutely vital that the person selected to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs be thoroughly versed in all aspects of veterans affairs," says DAV Washington Headquarters Executive Director David W. Gorman. "With the urgently needed funding increase for veterans programs and services being delayed yet again, a flood of wounded and injured from Iraq and Afghanistan coming to the VA for health care and other earned benefits and the huge backlog of pending disability compensation claims, the VA needs a strong leader who can immediately take charge of the department."

It's a radical notion. But it just might work.

Slate stakes out the position this week that President Bush's Cabinet is a "weirdly anonymous bunch" -- and attempts to back up the assertion with a quiz challenging readers to match Cabinet members' names with their faces and job titles.

I got 'em all -- after a little noodling. But then again, I work at a place called Government Executive, so it'd be a little embarrassing if I didn't.

By the way, Slate itself had to take two shots at launching the contest. Its initial version failed to account for the fact that Agriculture's Mike Johanns and Veterans Affairs' James Nicholson have departed their posts within the past couple of weeks.

A New York Times piece today on President Bush's attorney general choice, Michael Mukasey, focuses on what he is not: most notably, a "movement conservative." But the story also notes that neither is Mukasey "a Washington insider with experience in managing a federal bureaucracy." He could be in for an eye-opening experience.

Eric Black, a former reporter at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, reports on his blog today that the Office of Special Counsel is investigating allegations that Rachel Paulose, U.S. attorney for Minnesota, mishandled classified information and retaliated against career employees in her office who challenged her actions and her management style. Four top career officials already have taken demotions to non-supervisory jobs to protest Paulose's management of the office, Black reports. Investigators from two OSC regional offices have been to Minnesota to interview witnesses.

Paulose's predecessor, Thomas Heffelfinger, resigned in February 2006. Later, Black has reported, he learned that his name was on a list of U.S. attorneys targeted for dismissal by the Justice Department.

On a day when Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was trying to draw attention to her proposal for universal health care, one of her rivals, John Edwards sought to one-up her with an out-of the-box proposal of his own. According to the Edwards campaign, at a speech before the Laborers Leadership Convention in Chicago, Edwards said:

On the first day of my administration, I will submit legislation that ends health care coverage for the president, all members of Congress, and all senior political appointees in both branches of government on July 20th, 2009 -- unless we have passed universal health care reform.

There's already some chatter in the blogosphere about the possibly dubious constitutionality of this idea, at least as it applies to members of Congress. (The 27th Amendment says, "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.")

"Senior political appointees," though, could be out of luck. But maybe Schedule Cs will get to keep their coverage.

Update: By the way, it's worth noting the first item in Clinton's plan unveiled today:

Americans can keep their existing coverage or access the same menu of quality private insurance options that their Members of Congress receive through a new Health Choices Menu, established without any new bureaucracy as part of the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (FEHBP). In addition to the broad array of private options that Americans can choose from, they will be offered the choice of a public plan option similar to Medicare.

Is anybody else just a little disappointed that the Chertoff-to-Justice-and-Clay Johnson-to-Homeland Security scenario didn't play out as scripted after Alberto Gonzales resigned? Those would've been some fun confirmation hearings. And it would've been fun to see who Bush would've picked to ride out his term in Johnson's slot as administration management chief. Alas, the speed with which Johnson's office shot down this rumor (which is pretty rare in Washington, where most people at least like to remain coy about their prospects of taking on higher-profile positions) was, in retrospect, a clear sign that it was never meant to be.

We haven't heard much lately about the ongoing investigations into political briefings by White House staffers at federal agencies, but that doesn't mean they've faded into history. In fact, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., has apparently succeeded in getting House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to expand the panel's probe into the briefings to include looking into whether similar sessions were held during the Clinton administration.

Here's an e-mail from David Marin, the committee's Republican staff director, on the situation:

All-

In a letter today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman agreed with a request made earlier this year by Ranking Member Tom Davis that the Committee “would benefit from requesting copies of any political briefings that the Office of Political Affairs in the Clinton Administration may have given to federal agencies.”

Davis had suggested that the Committee seek Clinton Administration documents from the National Archives to help the Committee “better understand the practices of political officials in the previous administration…to provide bipartisan historical context.” Chairman Waxman also agreed today to support Davis’ request for information on any legal guidance that the Clinton Administration’s White House Counsel may have provided to the Office of Political Affairs about the political presentations.

Davis today said, “I am pleased Chairman Waxman agrees that for the good of this investigation and the good of the Committee, a little ‘compare and contrast’ is needed if we’re to fully understand how the White House political affairs shop operates, whether it’s under President Bush or under President Clinton. The investigation was suffering from a lack of historical context, making it appear more partisan than constructive.”

Shane Harris has come up with a bunch of reasons why Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff is unlikely to be the nominee to replace Alberto Gonzales at Justice. My favorite is #3:

Politicization and mismanagement at DHS. The new attorney general is supposed to restore credibility and career morale at the Justice Department. Given Chertoff's mixed track record on both fronts at Homeland Security, it's questionable whether lawmakers would see him as the right man for that job. The department is in the midst of a transition from mostly political leadership to career managers. Under Chertoff, the trend towards political management--and politicization--was palpable. The House Homeland Security Committee has cited "critical leadership vacancies" at the department; a quarter of top positions remain unfilled. As I wrote in June, DHS has a reputation as a land of misfit toys, a place where Bush loyalists and partisans get patronage posts for which they lack qualifications. Despite Chertoff's efforts now to turn that tide, the reputation has stuck, and one can imagine how lawmakers would judge skeptically his ability to cleanse Justice of the stain of partisanship.

John Edwards scored some points this week in New Orleans by proposing "Brownie's Law," requiring that political appointees be qualified for the positions for which they are nominated. (Actually it sounds more like a policy than an actual piece of legislation, since, of course, there's currently no law preventing a President Edwards from restricting his pool of nominees to fully qualified, experienced people. He'd just be the first president to actually do so.)

The proposal, of course, is sardonically named for former FEMA Director Michael Brown, who is forever linked to his role in the response to Hurricane Katrina and his previous work at the International Arabian Horse Association.

But as I've written before, and as Brown himself points out in an interview in the Washington Post today, Brown did have experience in emergency management when he was named to head FEMA. That experience was gained at FEMA itself. He started at the agency as general counsel and worked his way up over the course of a couple of years to the nomination for the top slot.

Now that may not have been the best experience, but if Edwards and other senators thought Brown lacked the qualifications to head FEMA, they had an easy remedy at their disposal: reject his nomination. They didn't.

None of this is to suggest that Brown did a stellar job, or was the best guy to run the agency. It is to suggest two other things:

• That sound bites and simple proposals about requiring appointee qualifications aren't going to improve the caliber of nominees.


• That continuing, even two years after the fact, to make Brown the designated scapegoat for Katrina merely serves to deflect attention away from the multiple systemic problems within the federal government in both preparing for a disaster like Katrina and responding to it.

There's a cautionary tale for federal agency chiefs in the New York Times report today on the performance of Richard E. Stickler, head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, during the response to the collapse of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah. The story says that Stickler is likely to face a grilling on Capitol Hill over the effort to rescue trapped miners, but he really seems to have done only one thing wrong: allowed the bombastic -- and, frankly, a little strange -- owner of the mine, Robert E. Murray, to hog the limelight. Murray, whose updates both confused the public and alienated miners' families, became the de facto voice of the response, with Stickler trailing in his wake.

The message is that even if you're the type of person who's disinclined to take center stage -- and Stickler is described in the Times piece as a "a thoughtful, bookish, behind-the-scenes man" -- at times of crisis, you'd better be prepared to step into the spotlight and be a voice of calm reassurance. And, of course, you'd also better be able to show your response efforts are swift and effective.

President Bush announced yesterday that he would nominate Stuart Ishimaru to serve another five-year term on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Apparently the fact that Ishimaru, a Democrat, was a vocal opponent of the commission's 2005 reorganization effort didn't stand in the way of his renomination.

My colleague Jonathan Rauch has yet another thought-provoking piece (subscription required) in the Atlantic this month, on the subject of the seemingly endless presidential campaigns. They're a good thing, Rauch argues: "They give U.S. politics an opportunity to mimic one of the best features of British-style parliamentary politics: the shadow government."

With the nomination process likely to be all but over early next year, candidates, he says, will be able to trot out prospective nominees for top administration positions: "If Giuliani and Clinton, or McCain and Obama, or whoever and whoever, stitched up the nomination in mid-February, they could easily vet and name slates of key appointees in time for the conventions."

It certainly would be intriguing if that actually happened, but I'm not holding my breath. Any candidate for a Cabinet position floated by a presumptive nominee would immediately become the subject of an intensive media vetting process that could turn up something embarrassing, costing the candidate dearly. It might be worth taking that chance with one or two names who could attract a few votes, but why run the risk with a whole slate of nominees if you didn't have to?

President Bush's nominee to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Michael Baroody, has run into a roadblock on Capitol Hill. USA Today reports that Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., has placed a hold on Baroody's nomination, arguing that the vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers is ill-suited to run one of the government's leading consumer-protection agencies.

But the manufacturers' association released a letter of support for Baroody from Roland Droitsch and James Henry, two high-level civil servants who worked with him at the Labor Department in the Reagan administration. They wrote:

"The (high) volume of output of health and safety rules during his tenure set a record … unmatched before or since. The fair-minded and intellectually honest man we know is unrecognizable to us in the reported depictions of him by some critics."