by Will Tucker
Sarah Whitmire/Center for Public Integrity
Dysfunction comes in many forms. Just ask any of the six-in-10 employees of the Federal Election Commission with low morale when it comes to their jobs. Better yet, ask their kids.
Officials at the FEC have a tall order, to be sure: keeping track of the funds being raised and spent and enforcing campaign finance law in an increasingly bizarre and cash-doused election cycle. But it's made harder by the fact that, as this agency chart shows, eight of the 20 top officials at the FEC are "acting" in those positions. In other words, they aren't permanent employees -- and that can bring an enervating uncertainty to the workplace, an FEC commissioner said Thursday.
Morale at the agency has been so low for so long its own inspector general (a permanent official, by the way, but one in an office that operates independently) opened an investigation into how it got so bad. Barely four in 10 employees at the agency are satisfied with their jobs, according to a report by the Office of Personnel Management cited by The Hill.
"I wish we could have everyone in permanent positions," Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat, said. "That would be better for staff morale. It has an impact on that."
Like most of the agency's issues, the problem starts at the top. Weintraub repeatedly said in an interview that the acting officials in the FEC's leadership ranks are fine public servants who do excellent work. To become permanent, though, they must be approved by the commission -- the six members of which are hopelessly deadlocked along ideological lines.
And Weintraub described "ripple effects": Promote one good public servant from a permanent position to a higher one, and wind up with two officials needing to be approved by the commission.
"Everyone is really working hard and doing their best. I don't want to suggest that people are not doing their best work...but the agency obviously is not as well-run as it should be," she said. "That's our fault. that's on us -- our inability to give clear guidance in policy decisions, personnel decisions."
There's more Congress could do to help the agency, too. "We've tried to fill the general counsel position," Weintraub said, but "part of the problem is the salary level. The commission has asked Congress to fix it. In the case of the general counsel, [the salary is] not enough." The agency has gone without a permanent top lawyer since 2013.
Or, as Weintraub's fellow commissioner, Ann Ravel, has said previously, Congress could overhaul the whole agency. Bills are pending in Congress that would do that, but they aren't anywhere near the top of the to-do list for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) or House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.); Republicans in general have indicated little interest in seeing the agency be more functional. Consider the fact that five of the six commissioners, who must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, are serving despite their terms having expired; there is nobody to take their place.
"I'm particularly frustrated by it because I've seen this commission work," she said. "I've been here long enough to have experienced what it's like when...all the commissioners are committed to enforcing the law."
Commissioner Lee Goodman, a Republican, did not respond to a request for comment through the FEC press office. The press office also denied a request for comment from one of the acting officials.