Mike Causey

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Next to the President, and your immediate supervisor, the most important person in your federal work life is probably a guy named John Berry. He’s the bra...

Federal News Network Staff

May 12, 2009 4:00 am

3 min read

Next to the President, and your immediate supervisor, the most important person in your federal work life is probably a guy named John Berry. He’s the brand-new director of the Office of Personnel Management.

Some people think he’s swapped the best federal job in D.C. (Director of the National Zoo with all those cute pandas and pygmy hippos) for one of the most thankless: The care and feeding of the civil service. Plus the OPM Director often has to make one of the toughest calls in government: When and if to shutdown nonessential federal operations in DC when we get snow. It has ruined at least one career.

OPM is one of those federal operations that the average person, unless they work for Uncle Sam or were born and bred inside the beltway, doesn’t know exists. Or what it does. Or care.

But for federal workers, postal employees and retirees, the OPM is critical because of its role in their daily life. It handles the retirement programs, the insurance programs and interprets legislation enacted by Congress.

Past OPM Directors, like the Czars of Russia, have a track record all over the place. Some were reformers – even if it meant destroying the village to save it. Others were academics who either had plans to make the civil service better or to put bureaucrats where they belong, i.e. among the ranks of the unemployed. They ranged, according to people who worked with them, from the charming to the paranoid. One even had bodyguards.

But they set the tone for the civil service during their tenure and carried out White House plans and congressional mandates. As such they are very important people whether you are looking for a federal job, have one or are retired from the federal service.

Berry comes in with a long background on Capitol Hill working for Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who is now Majority leader of the House of Representatives. Hoyer’s one of the best friends feds have in Congress and that has come in handy when pay raises were being decided and pro-fed legislation is being scheduled for hearings and votes.

Most high federal officials are screened/protected, especially from workers. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Who needs a midnight call at home about a promotion denied? And they can be more serious. Example: some years back, a top official of the Merit Systems Protection Board returned home to find two indoor-pets had been killed. From the evidence they suspected the perpetrator was someone who didn’t like the way the board had ruled in his case.

But there are ways to get to the boss in a sane, professional manner. Take tomorrow: Director Berry has agreed to spend an hour with us, on our Your Turn with Mike Causey radio show, talking about just two people: You and himself.

We’ll talk about where he wants to take the federal workforce, what’s likely to happen, and what is – and isn’t – in the cards.

But if you’ve got a question, fire away. Send it to me: If we can we’ll try to incorporate it in the show. We’re on live from 10 am to 11 am EDT Wednesday.

Listen if you can. Email your questions for the Director to me at: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com

Nearly Useless Factoid
by Suzanne Kubota

An estimated 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island from 1892 to 1954. Today, more than 100 million people – about a third of the U.S. population – are their descendants. In a possibly related item, Philo Farnsworth filed for a patent on the first complete electronic television system in 1927.