Agency head accused of impairing whistleblower protection

WASHINGTON – The head of the federal office responsible for protecting government whistleblowers is the focus of a complaint filed Thursday by some of his own employees, who say he is undermining laws that encourage workers to expose wrongdoing.

Scott Bloch, who runs the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, refuses to enforce laws that protect whistleblowers in the federal workplace, especially gays, and is retaliating against his own staff, the employees alleged.

Bloch’s office called the allegations a set of “baseless charges” and said they would be forwarded to the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency “in the hope that they will be able to put them to rest once and for all.”

According to the employees’ complaint, a new policy instituted by Bloch resulted in the agency closing more than 600 cases in only a few months, without referring any of them for investigation of whether the employees’ allegations of government misconduct are true.

Under the policy, the employees allege career staff in the agency’s disclosure unit are not permitted to contact whistleblowers but are required to close their cases unless their written filings are sufficient on their face to establish a basis for investigation.

“While publicly congratulating himself for reducing the caseload … Mr. Bloch has failed to explain just what happened to all of the cases he closed,” said the complaint filed in Washington.

Agency spokeswoman Cathy Deeds said, “It’s absolutely false that any directive was given that whistleblowers should not be called.” She said that in some circumstances, it was not necessary to call the whistleblowers because they already provided sufficient information to process the case.

Early this year, Bloch reassigned a dozen employees from the agency’s headquarters to offices around the country. According to the complaint, the reassignments were the result of friction between the employees and Bloch.

Among those reassigned was the office’s expert on the Hatch Act, the law that restricts political activity by federal workers at all levels of government.

Bloch came under fire last year when he moved to deny gay federal workers protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation and removed references to sexual orientation from the agency’s Web site and complaint forms.

The White House affirmed President Bush’s support for protecting gay federal workers from discrimination after some Democratic lawmakers complained.

In a letter to Bush, the employees’ lawyer, Debra S. Katz, wrote: “Mr. Bloch ignored your express direction that federal agencies enforce” anti-discrimination laws against gays.

Since the controversy, Bloch has doubled the number of political appointees at the agency and issued a gag order barring his employees from talking to the press or Congress about internal agency matters, the complaint alleged.