While the Trump administration without discerning tens of thousands of talented officials, it also wants to pay great wages to the hacking of partisan hacks.
On April 10, Charles Ezell, acting director of the staff management office, sent a letter To all agency chiefs, claiming that his office “reaffirms flexibility” in setting the conditions of employment for employees in Annex C. The employees of Annex C are appointed politicians, and According to OPMThey generally occupy political or confidential roles, often as confidential assistants, special advice and political experts. They do not need confirmation of the Senate but must be requested and approved by the OPM.
According to Ezell, the flexibility of paying an initial salary of up to $ 195,200 to the appointed people is necessary to attract people who will help “stimulate the unusually expansive and transformer agenda that the American people elected President Trump to accomplish”.
Usually, these positions are provided by people with specific political expertise or experience in providing assistance in confidential contexts. A analysis Employees of Annex C of former President Joe Biden, managed by the management of the non-partisan Connect group, found that most of the hires came from the best colleges, more than 75% had at least five years of post-color experience and had recently worked in non-profit organizations, on Capitol Hill, elsewhere in the federal government, or on a campaign.
Well, it sounds well, right? So how many people are we talking about here? During the last year of the presidency of Barack Obama, there was 1403 Employees of Annex C. The analysis of Leadership Connect in January 2022 revealed that the Biden administration had appointed 745 employees in Annex C at that time.
If the Trump administration hopes to use annex C jobs to fill some of the gaps it created during its dismissal 200,000 Federal workers, so he will have to hire much more than 1,400.
However, Ezell’s letter is vague on the reason for the jobs of Annex C. It may be only a means of passing an indefinite number of hardcore supporters and not qualified in soft jobs of the federal government.
The punchline to all this is that the administration Also Has no intention to follow the normal constraints on the employment of Annex C. In his letter, Ezell said to the agencies of “Revising and, if necessary, revoke the delegations and sub-delegations provided to the Human Resources (HR) of the Agency to fix the conditions of appointment of Annex C, including the initial salary”.
Here, Ezell seems to tell agencies to ignore their human resources processes, including salary ceilings, which would mean that Trump’s pillars at OPM could extinguish six -digit jobs with minimum verification of the named people.
Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine de Virginie and Patty Murray de Washington wrote to Ezell on this subject, emphasize The fact that this also allows annex C candidates to start working in roles which, according to the administration itself, are very sensitive political roles, “without verification, including for conflicts of interest or the checks of history”.
In the federal government, $ 195,200 are the maximum amount which can be paid to “general calendar“Workers – that is to say essentially all those who are not in an executive role – who lives in the metropolitan region of Washington, DC.
To get an idea of the realization of normal civil servants, this salary occurs what is called the years 15 and step 6 of employment. The “grade” reflect The level of difficulty of employment, its responsibilities and the necessary qualifications, while the “step” reflects the number of years that a worker played the role as long as they played acceptably.
In practice, going from step 1 to step 10 normally takes 18 years. Move in grade is more flexible, depending on performance and promotions. People with master’s degree generally arrive at 9th year to start, $ 69,923. These are people with an advanced diploma and experience in the field, but they would receive around 36% of the salary that unpaid and unskilled individuals receive.
The Trump administration is full of extremely incompetent people who have convinced themselves that they came to merit, while instead, it is generally due to a combination of a rather flexible feeling of morality, of a deep hatred for anyone Trump also hates, and because they are a hetero white man. White hetero men, in the vision of Trump’s world, are intrinsically meritorious hirings, standing on their two feet, while everyone is a rental of unreserved diversity.
The administration therefore does not seem to worry that the named of Trump Billy Long, currently hidden In OPM while waiting for confirmation to direct the Internal Revenue Service, seems to do almost nothing to OPM. And the administration remains behind the defense secretary Pete Hegseth, no doubt the the least competent Member of the cabinet in a well -supplied administration with them.
In addition to Trump digging the public service, it is also try to reclassify Tens of thousands of civil servants as you can at will, which makes them easier to shoot.
Trump redo the government to his own image: cruel, mercurial, unstable and unqualified. And unfortunately for the rest of us, this is one of the only things that Trump is really dedicated to doing.
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