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Senate Passes Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act
The Project for Government Oversight (POGO) details the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act that the Senate passed for the fourth time. It is now up to the House to take a break from worrying about dudes getting married and renaming Post Offices and step up.The bill (S. 743) grants federal workers the protections they need to safely report waste, fraud and abuse. Which is good news because taxpayers, who rely on whistleblowers to disclose corruption within the government, are now one step closer towards saving billions of dollars. If people inside the government don’t tell you the taxpayers what is going on, how will you know? Always important to a democracy that depends on an informed citizenry, in the current age of over-classification, whistleblowers are even more important.
POGO tells us:
To put the bill in real-world terms: it could help prevent scandals like the General Services Administration (GSA) lavish spending binge, help protect important national whistleblowers—like Peter Van Buren and Mike Helms—and encourage would-be whistleblowers to step forward in the public interest.
The bill’s significance is clear. It modernizes the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 by expanding “free speech rights, specifically covering national security and intelligence community workers, federal scientists, and Transportation Security Administration officers. The bill also will strengthen failed procedures, close loopholes, create efficiencies, and affirm lawful disclosures. For the first time, some federal whistleblowers would have a real ‘day in court,’ since the bill provides access to a jury trial in federal district court,” according to a press release by POGO and allies.
Read more on the POGO website.
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Robert MacLean said...
1We need protections from executive agencies’ pseudo-secrecy markings like Controlled Unclassified Information, Sensitive But Unclassified, For Official Use Only, and Law Enforcement Sensitive, and my favorite, Sensitive Security Information (SSI). If they get you on violating their regulations for these markings — thanks to my case — a federal employee’s whistleblower rights can be instantly cancelled. The TSA successfully argued that a violation of their secrecy regulations is breaking the law, and that I should have known better, regardless of the fact that they retroactively applied its SSI marking three months after firing me.
Let’s hope the House gets a provision into the final bill to put an end to this.
05/11/12 12:28 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
2Yeah, violations of classified information are a danger to all freedom-loving people, except when it’s for a good cause.
http://backchannel.al-monitor.com/?p=239
05/11/12 4:15 PM | Comment Link
Mary said...
3Will this change your employment status with State?
05/12/12 5:21 PM | Comment Link
wemeantwell said...
4Afraid not. State is well into the termination process for me, and the House has yet to approve the new Act. It will be help the next guy, though.
05/12/12 7:58 PM | Comment Link