The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is instructing Federal agencies to consider reclassifying “career reserved” Senior Executive Service (SES) positions as “general,” giving them until March 24 to review and revise a list of SES positions.
“Career reserved” roles can only be filled by career Federal employees. However, changing these SES positions to “general” would allow the Trump administration to fill these roles with political appointees.
In a Feb. 24 memo, OPM said that there can only be 3,571 career reserved positions under law, but that number over the past four years “has grown rapidly and is now roughly double the minimum.”
OPM attached a list of government-wide career reserved positions to the memo, and it is asking agencies to develop a revised, proposed list of career reserved positions at the agency “consistent with agency organic statutes.”
Agencies must submit a single request to OPM to redesignate each current career reserved position that does not appear on the proposed list.
Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell gave agencies until March 24 to complete both of these tasks.
The memo drew opposition from the Senior Executives Association (SEA), a professional association that supports career members of the SES and advocates for good government solutions.
“This document infers career Federal executives cannot be trusted to fulfill their responsibilities related to assisting incoming administrations with effectively implementing their agendas,” said Marcus Hill, president of the SEA. “This simply is not true. Historically, the vast majority of SES and other Federal executives have honorably and faithfully served bipartisan presidential administrations.”
“OPM’s latest guidance on the SES is inconsistent with the law governing the SES, by insisting that policy-related positions be reserved for general billets that can only be filled by an administration’s political appointees,” Hill added. “OPM’s suggestion that career executives are mere technicians is inconsistent with reality and the law.”
This week’s document comes after OPM issued a previous memo instructing Federal government agencies to remove the designation of “career reserved” roles for agency chief information officers (CIOs).
That memo also drew opposition, including from House Oversight and Reform Committee Ranking Member Gerry Connolly, D-Va.
“The memorandum is yet another attempt to use partisan political attacks to sideline and marginalize career professionals in the government under the guise of promoting government efficiency,” Rep. Connolly wrote in a letter to OPM.
“I am concerned that CIO leadership is the latest victim of the Administration’s anti-Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility crusade and broader effort to replace career civil servants with individuals who are, first and foremost, loyal to the President and his political agenda,” he added.
