The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Jan. 17 voted to approve two White House renominations that would bring the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) up to full strength.
The committee voted 8-0 to approve the renomination of Henry Kerner to become a member of the three-person MSPB board, and it voted 7-1 to approve the renomination of Cathy Ann Harris to become chair of the MSPB board. She is already a member of the board and has served as acting chair since 2022.
The committee’s vote to approve the renominations sends them to the full Senate for further consideration.
Both of those MSPB nominations were made by President Biden last year but were not acted upon by the Senate by the end of 2023, and by rule were returned to the White House. The renominations offered by the Biden administration last week put the two nominations back in play for the Senate this year.
Committee Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mich., called both nominees “highly qualified,” and said that Harris’ work as acting chair of the MSPB has been “impressive.”
The MSPB is an independent, quasi-judicial agency in the executive branch that serves as the guardian of Federal merit systems to protect against partisan political and other prohibited personnel practices.
The board currently has only two of its three allotted members, which is enough to constitute a quorum and issue decisions. From 2017 to March 2022, however, the board did not have enough members to constitute a quorum, and during that time accumulated a backlog of several thousand cases.
Also on Jan. 17, the committee voted to approve the nominations of Jeff Rezmovic to become chief financial officer at the Department of Homeland Security, and Suzanne Summerlin to become general counsel of the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
